ΑΝ

INQUIRY

INTO THE

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER

OF THE

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.

"A commonwealth ought to be but as one huge christian personage, one mighty
growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body."
Milton's Prose Works.

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by

WILEY & PUTNAM,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the

Southern District of New-York.

AN

G. F. HOPKINS & SON, Printers, 2 Ann-street.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE writer of the following essay has aimed to do what he thought the times imperiously called for.

It has seemed to him that for some years past there has been a dangerous and growing misapprehension in the public mind as to the true constitutional relation of our political interests to those of a religious nature. He has seen with anxiety that even wise and good men, some of them his personal friends, have gradually given way to the opinion, which men of another stamp have made it their business to inculcate, that these two classes of interests ought to be kept so wide apart from each other in the conduct of our public affairs, as to have no reciprocal influence take place between them. He had thought that christianity was admirable everywhere and in all circumstances. How is it possible that political life