which nature, always correct, as having God for its author, properly directs them: And nothing is more certain, than that all forced and unnatural exertion tends directly to destroy the animal functions. Ask a savage of the North or the South American forests, if he ever caught wild horse with the spavin, the ring-bone, the founder, or the heaves? And simple as he is, he will laugh at the simplicity of such a question. He will tell you, that generally speaking, all animals, which follow the dictates of Nature, whose laws admit of no excessive exertion, or excessive indulgences, die off gradually of old age, and not by disorders or diseases which flow from bad habits. The current of life ceases, not because it is disordered; but because it has run out in its natural course; as the light of a lamp is extinguished, when the oil that supplies the wick, or the wick itself, is exhausted.

In a land, where virtue, morality and industry, to say nothing of religion, prevail over vice, idleness and folly, we repeat it, sound, strong and steady horses only are necessary; and racehorses, it cannot be too often inculcated, are fit for neither saddle, nor draught, in those respects. Whoever has read the life of John Jay will recollect the fact, how near the venerable Judge Peters, of Pennsylvania, came to losing his valuable life, by one of these worthless race

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horses; of which, he thus writes to Mr. Jay, on January 19th, 1815-"I have but lately recovered from a most unfortunate accident;having been thrown on the stones of our turnpike from my horse, who took fright and ran away with me. He was a Kentucky racer, a quality which I did not know." "I had three trenched gashes, yet I escaped being crack-brained," &c. These horses are indeed fit only for the idle and vicious purposes for which they are trained; and the sooner the breed is lost, the better will it be for the country, and especially for the temporal and eternal welfare of thousands of individuals, who make ship-wreck of their souls upon the Race-ground. It is indeed most delectable sport, to see all sorts of folly and wickedness going on from one end of a Race-ground to the other for several days, sometimes a whole week, in succession. To see well meaning but weak young men and women betrayed into vile courses, and led to ruin! To see the meanest sharpers seated or standing round various gambling tables, robbing the pockets of the unwary by pre-concerted and systematic fraud! To see pretended gentlemen so eager to win bets of each other, as to be wholly regardless of the means by which they succeed, whether fair or foul! To see the fleetest horse lose the race by an understanding

among "the knowing ones," that they may win the purse, which a natural credulity had led the losers to suppose would be taken by the horse known to be the swiftest racer, if put to his full speed! All this is indeed choice sport, is it not, for a mind rational and virtuous !

Since, then, the argument in favor of a pernicious practice, which horse-racers and their idle or thoughless advocates, pretend to derive from the improvement of our breed of horses, falls to the ground; the next reason advanced is, that in all ages and countries, such public sports have been found necessary and useful! But this, we presume, must be accepted in the same sense that the drunkard finds his bottle necessary and useful, when once he has gone so far in drinking, that the organs of his stomach require a continual stimulus to preserve a febrile and miserable existence; an existence which is of itself a burthen, and which is cut shorter by every recurrence of the intoxicating draught.

We are referred, however, to the chariot races, the amphitheatres and circusses of Greece and Rome, in ancient times; and to modern Europe, for many public sports, such as masquerades, bull baitings, and pugilistic matches, as well as horse-racing, and every other species of useless, idle, and profligate amusement. We

should as soon think of advising a chaste and spotless virgin, to look up to some infamous procuress for an example or guide, as to call upon a young republic to copy the manners and amusements of old, decrepid, and corrupt monarchies. The monarchies of Europe have indeed a deep interest at stake, in the perversion and corruption of our manners and habits. The sooner we become sunk in corruption, the sooner will our governments assimilate to theirs ; and they will have no more to fear from the examples of free republics on the western shores of the Atlantic. Every reader of common sense must perceive, that representative and republican governments must rise in Europe, or fall here one or the other is inevitable. But to cut short this part of our argument, we boldly affirm, that in no state, either ancient or modern, have any such practices prevailed, as that which we are now combating, while the people retained their primitive freedom, virtue and simplicity (for all the nations of the earth have once been free)-that whenever and wherever they have prevailed, they have invariably marked the decline of liberty, morality and religion. In fact in all nations, the very dawn of idle and vicious amusements has been the sure precursor of ruin. "Vice of all kinds," says Paley—and with much more truth than he says many other

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things" but vice most particularly of the licentious kind, is astonishingly infectious. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." But shall a young nation, scarcely emerging from infancy, be taught to look on the charioteers, the gladiators, and the idle and vicious rabbles of corrupt and degenerate Greece and Rome for examples? Shall a young, but flourishing and rising nation, like ours, blest with gospel light and liberty, as well as civil and political freedom, derive its morals and manners from heathen ages, when neither virtue, nor morality, nor religion, could claim any thing definite in name, nature, motive or end? When what was virtue in one school of philosophers, was vice in another : And when religion had as many gods, as philosophy had various, distracted, and conflicting schools; nay, when every school was liable to incessant divisions; and the whole system of religion, morals and manners, exhibited another CHAOS, till the advent of the Redeemer, and the pure and radiant light of his Divine Word, brought order out of confusion, and poured upon the mental vision of a benightage, the bright and eternal beams of heavenly love, wisdom and glory! Or shall a young republic, boasting of its improvements in political liberty, if not in civil lore, take examples from the sports and games of the monarchies of mo

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