Excerpt from Our Political Idolatry: A Discourse Delivered in the First Church in Roxbury, on Fast Day, April 6, 1843 Our text leads us to this remark, namely, that our nation is liable to the same errors and sins which have in all ages brought distress or ruin on other nations, and that, greatly favored as we are in some respects, if we do as other nations have done, we shall suffer as they have suffered. Jerusalem and her idols must fare as Samaria and her idols. Our people think otherwise. They seem to imagine that our free institutions, universal suffrage, and the establishment of what are called popular rights, are an absolute pledge and infallible means of national welfare; as if, by avoiding privi leged orders and monarchical power, we had turned out of the only path to ruin, and must needs be safe. This is a great delusion, and it is high time to awake from it. We flatter ourselves that we are free indeed, and absolutely, and always must be, if we keep on as we are going on, - free, in a sense in which people, under different forms of government, never were, nor can be. No such thing; we have a sove reign, and one that threatens to become, if he be not yet, as absolute, as arbitrary, as uncontrolled, and as capricious too, as ever sat upon a throne. That sovereign is the majority, a dominant party. Out of seventeen millions, the nine mil lions constitute the sovereign, and the eight are subjects. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.