Excerpt from The American Citizen: His Rights and Duties, According to the Spirit of the Constitution of the United States When the subject of the following work was first proposed to me, the objection presented itself, as it has probably occurred already to the reader, that the design was not in harmony with my ministerial office, and that it could be far more acceptably and usefully accomplished by some other individual, whose name and talents were known and approved amongst the statesmen and politicians of the country. And doubtless, in the minds of many, there would be much force in the objection. For the most part, the servants of the sanctuary have little familiarity with the topics suggested by the title of the present volume. The kingdom to which they are mainly devoted is not of this world. The spiritual, rather than the secular interests of man kind, are the objects of their care. And hence, the popular im pression of their incapacity to form a right judgment on tempo ral questions, seems to have a plausible argument in its favor. 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.