rmers sighed over flocks and
wheat as useless as the stones and dirt. The wide sea of commerce was
stagnant; upon the realm of Industry settled down a sullen lethargy.

Out of this reverse swarmed an unnumbered host of dishonest men, like
vermin from a carcass. Banks were exploded,--or robbed,--or fleeced by
astounding forgeries. Mighty companies, without cohesion, went to pieces,
and hordes of wretches snatched up every bale that came ashore. Cities
were ransacked by troops of villains. The unparalleled frauds, which
sprung like mines on every hand, set every man to trembling lest the next
explosion should be under his own feet. Fidelity seemed to have forsaken
men. Many that had earned a reputation for sterling honesty were cast so
suddenly headlong into wickedness, that man shrank from man. Suspicion
overgrew confidence, and the heart bristled with the nettles and thorns of
fear and jealousy. Then had almost come to pass the divine delineation of
ancient wickedness: _The good man is perished out of the earth: and there
is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every
man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands
earnestly, the prince and the judge ask for a reward: and the great man
uttereth his mischievous desire; so they wrap it up. The best of them is a
brier; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge._ The world looked
upon a continent of inexhaustible fertility, (whose harvest had glutted
the markets, and rotted in disuse,) filled with lamentation, and its
inhabitants wandering like bereaved citizens among the ruins of an
earthquake, mourning for children, for houses crushed, and property buried
forever.

That no measure might be put to the calamity, the Church of God, which
rises a stately tower of refuge to desponding men, seemed now to have lost
its power of protection. When the solemn voice of Religion should have
gone over the land, as the call of God to guilty man to seek in him their
strength; in this time when Religion should have restored sight to the
blind, made the lame to walk, and bound up the broken-hearted, she was
herself mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came the noise of warring
sects; some contending against others with bitter warfare; and some,
possessed of a demon, wallowed upon the ground foaming and rending
themselves. In a time of panic, and disaster, and distress, and crime, the
fountain which should have been for the healing of m