such a barrier to the encroachment of our migratory population. With that and the Indian settlements on our west, she would deem her whole border sheltered from such unauthorized encroachments. She would be glad to see any such voluntary terminus put to what she deems the grasping ambition of our Government. She must have lost all hope of ever regaining Texas; and favor and liberality extended toward her, in adjusting the northern line of Texas, would entirely conciliate her.

The arrangement, while it fostered and promoted the peculiar views and interests of the five States more particularly interested in prospective emancipation, would allay if not satisfy the political jealousies of the North and the South. The West would be satisfied as to the security of her commercial emporium, and the craving for the good land would be appeased. The South ought to be satisfied with the accession of another slaveholding State; and the North ought to be satisfied that the threatened addition of four new slaveholding States is mitigated down to a single one, with the best sort of a guarantee that the evil to them, such as it is, must there stop, to say nothing of the increased chance of emancipation in some of the present slaveholding States. The considerate and better advised of the Southern people, such as are not mere politicians, must be more than well pleased that the injury to them from a cotton growing rivalry in Texas should be circumscribed within reasonable limits.

A more favorable occasion may never occur for obtaining the country, and at the same time conciliating these various interests. and attaining the paramount object of aiding emancipation.

CHAPTER XVII.

CONSERVATIVE ADDRESS AND RESOLUTIONS.

ADOPTED BY THE CONVENTION HELD IN LOUISVILLE, FEBRUARY, 1859.

THIS Convention of delegates to organize a State opposition to the further rule of the self-styled Democratic party, and to propose such an opposition by all good men throughout the nation, will state some of their objections to that party:

1. It is essentially a Disunion Party.

It hugs to its embrace many avowed disunionists, who, if they do not control, have great influence over the party; who, by constant agitation of the slave question, for sinister purposes, are rapidly driving the whole nation into two great sectional parties, as the precursor of disunion.

The modern Democracy, at the time of its organization, found the nation comparatively free from sectional strife. The feeling of patriotism and loyalty to the Union prevailed throughout the nation. Disunionism existed nowhere, or, if harbored in the breasts of a few, it was carefully concealed. Now, avowed disunionists may be found in every locality. Under the rule of this party all real patriotism has died out in the breasts of large masses of our countrymen. Its later career has been signalized by nothing so much as angry sectional strife, engendering the bitterest sectional animosities. We have factions in the North and in the South openly denouncing the Union in the severest terms that hatred can invent, and avowing its destruction as their principal aim.

On the eve of the last Presidential election, the conduct, public speeches, and published letters of many of the leaders of the party left little room to doubt that there was an organized trea

sonable conspiracy to seize the Government and break up the Union by armed force, if the election went against their party. One of the governors published his intention, in that event, to march on Washington, seize the Government by force, and to meet the opposition of sixty thousand Union-loving men in Virginia, by arming her slaves. Another prominent leader, who is now enjoying a seat in the Senate with the full approval of the party, in a published letter declared that any resistance to the enterprise by the Union men of North Carolina should be crushed by "the swift attention of vigilance committees;" in other words, by murder and assassination. "The domestic neighborhood civil war," which the Governor of Virginia said he anticipated, was to be carried on by these Democratic conspirators against their Union-loving fellow-citizens in the one State by the aid of armed slaves, and in the other by organized bands of murderers and assassins. The unrebuked public avowal of such atrocious purposes sufficiently prove the disloyalty, not merely of the leaders themselves, but also of a large portion of their followers. It is not to be believed that these men would have formed such a conspiracy or avowed such purposes unless they felt assured that they would be sustained by their party in the South. Such belief is ample proof of the general diffusion of the disunion sentiment with the great body of the party at the South. The existence of this formidable conspiracy, though frequently charged, it is believed none of these men ever pretended to deny. These facts and the industrious circulation for years past, by leaders of the party, of pamphlets, speeches, and essays, directly advocating disunion as desirable for the South, abundantly sustain the charge that it is a disunion party. But while calling for condemnation on its leaders, it is by no means intended to include the mass of their too confiding followers, and especially in Kentucky, who we fondly, proudly hope and believe are untainted with disunionism, and who will scorn any party domination leading them to that result.

2. It is a Disorganizing, Destructive Party.

It has destroyed the conservative elements of nearly all our State Constitutions, and gave evidence, through the utterance of some of its most influential leaders, of an intention to attack the

Federal Constitution in the same way but for the disastrous check which the party recently received.

Through its party chief and other leaders it proclaims its execrable dogma that no majority of the people can give permanent protection to minorities or individuals against the unjust aggressions of party majorities, by means of their great governmental compacts, their written constitutions. In this land of constitutional liberty, to this nation of freemen, who were taught by the great founders of the Government that constitutional liberty was the only liberty worth the having, the party proclaims, through the official message of its President, this new dogma, destructive of the stability and value of all constitutions. It proclaims, through him, the doctrine of unrestrainable power of temporary party majorities. To prove that they cannot be restrained to even a fair and reasonable mode prescribed by a constitution for its own alteration, President Buchanan says: "The will of the majority is supreme and irresistible. It can unmake constitutions at pleasure." He argues at length to prove that majorities cannot be confined to any particular mode, however reasonable, in altering, revoking, or remaking constitutions.

Another influential leader, one who might be selected as a specimen incarnation of the principles of modern Democracy, said, in the Senate: "The importance of State Constitutions in this country has been greatly exaggerated. In their declaration of principles they but repeat the common law which our fathers brought with them, and which would be law without such repetition. The limitations in them can be modified by the people at their pleasure. Any provision which pretends to take away that power or delay its exercise, is impotent against a majority of the people." In other words, it is impotent against the power of any temporary party majority. In still other words, the dominant party in a legislature may, within a period of two months, by the vote of a bare majority of the people, obtain power to persecute the minority into exile or even hang them for their political or religious opinions. Though this does not verify the novel discovery of this Senator, that our bills of rights "are mere repetitions of the common law," yet it must be conceded that this new theory would render them as impotent to restrain legislative

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power as the common law, which here and in England only lives by legislative permission.

Thus the modern progressive Democracy, through its President and other leaders, openly avows this new creed, treasonable to the cause of civil liberty, of which it has long been suspected, denying all sanctity or value to constitutions, and viewing them with disfavor, as unnecessary temporary restraints upon the divine inalienable rights of majorities. This party finds no cause for veneration or respect in the fact that our constitutions are the great organic compacts and covenants of the people with each other, when alone they are acting in their real sovereign capacity; that they are the great measure of right between majorities and minorities; that they are the only restraint against despotic government—that is, upon the power of a party majority; and that they afford the only security to individuals or minorities in the enjoyment of private property, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and all other privileges that are the birth-rights of American freemen, and which are not the mere concessions of majorities. The citizen must be secure against persecution by the majority for his religious or political opinions, and secure in the enjoyment of his private property, or there is no civil liberty. He cannot be so secured but by inviolable written constitutions. This party teaches that our nation ever since its existence has been absurdly engaged in the repetition of futile efforts to secure civil liberty by means of inviolable constitutions, placed beyond the immediate reach of the heated, vindictive passions of temporary majorities. For constitutional liberty we are invited to substitute the unbridled government of the immaculate Democracy. The independence and equality of the States, the compromises of the Federal Constitution, with its protection to local rights and institutions, are to be subjected to the will of a majority of the people or of the States, or of both. The only barrier against the consolidation of all power in the Federal Government is to be

yielded up to this new dogma, the inalienable, irresistible, divine right of the majority!