n of one to
another would still be the same. If the baser wool should be transmuted
into gold, the very same process would refine and sublimate the precious
metal, in a corresponding ratio; and the equilibrium of God's appointed
relations would remain undisturbed.

But it is more especially in the primitive periods, before the great
political truths become household words, and while the reign of law and
municipal organization is a vague and distant thing, that most citizens
shrink from official duties. Diffidence, in this matter is,
fortunately, a disease which time will alleviate--a youthful weakness,
which communities "outgrow," as children do physical defects; and, I
believe, of late years, few offices have "gone begging," either east or
west of the great barrier of the Allegheny.

In the earlier periods of its history, we have seen that the western
country was peculiarly situated. The settlements were weak and the
population small; with the exception of a few narrow fields, in the
vicinity of each frontier fort, or stockade, the land was a wilderness,
held in undisturbed possession by the savages and wild beasts. The great
struggle, which we call the Revolution, but which was, in fact, only a
justifiable and successful rebellion, had exhausted the force and
drained the coffers of the feeble federal government; had plunged the
infant states into enormous debts; and the only means of paying these
were the boundless but unclaimed lands of the west, which the same
causes rendered them unable to protect. The scattered settlements on the
Mississippi side of the Alleghenies, were thus left to their own scanty
resources; and the distance was so great, that, had the older states
been able to afford assistance, the delays and losses attendant upon its
transmission across so wide a tract of wilderness, would have made it
almost nugatory.

In those times, therefore, though a few were looking forward to separate
political organization and the erection of new states, the larger number
of the western people were too constantly occupied with their defence,
to give much attention to internal politics. Such organization as they
had was military, or patriarchal: the early pioneer, who had
distinguished himself in the first explorations of the country, or by
successfully leading and establishing a new settlement, as he became the
commander of the local fort, was also the law-giver of the community.
The pressure of external danger