tory? His undaunted soul, lifted already to glimpses of another life, may shame the feebler spirits of a later generation. There is one other personage, at another period, who, with precisely the same burthen of winters, has asserted the same supremacy of powers. It is the celebrated Dandolo, Doge of Venice, at the age of eighty-four, of whom the historian Gibbon has said, in words which are strictly applicable to our own Quincy: "He shoue in the last period of human life as one of the most illustrious characters of the time. Under the weight of years he retained a sound understanding and a manly courage, the spirit of a hero and the wisdom of a patriot." This old man carried the Venetian Republic over to the Crusaders, and exposed his person freely to all the perils of war, so that the historian describes him in words again applicable to our day, saying, "In the midst of the conflict the Doge, a venerable and conspicuous form, stood aloft, in complete armor, on the prow of the galley, while the great standard of St. Mark was displayed before him." Before the form of our venerable head is displayed the standard of a greater Republic than Venice-thrilling with its sight greater multitudes than ever gazed on the standard of St. Mark, while a sublimer cause is ours than the cause of the Crusaders; for our task is not merely to ransom an empty sepulchre, but to ransom the Saviour himself in the bodies of his innumerable children; not merely to displace the infidel from a distant foreign soil, but to displace him from the very Jerusalem of our liberties.-Hon. Charles Sumner, 1856.

THE ELECTION OF A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT A REASON FOR DISUNION.

I was surprised to hear that gentleman's declaration that the election to the Presidency of William H. Seward, or Chase, or any other Republican candidate, entertaining like opinions with them, would not be a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union. He said he would wait for some overt act. I should consider the election of such a candidate, by a northern sectional majority, as a declaration of war against our rights; and I rejoice in the belief that those whom I represent, and the gallant State to which I owe my first and highest allegiance, will not hesitate in such contingency, let the consequences be what they may, to fall back on their reserved rights, and declare to the world, "As for this Union, we have no longer any lot or part in it."

When this Union was founded, it was regarded as a doubtful experiment. Patrick Henry, with his matchless eloquence, and many others of the purest and best patriots of the land, men who had devoted themselves to the cause of the Revolution, opposed the ratification of the Constitution. They believed then-and some of them predictedthat if the Union was formed, the Southern States would sink down into mere appendages of the North.

If the framers of the Constitution had ever dreamed of this persistent, relentless war upon the institution of slavery, they would never have agreed to the formation of the Union at all. The question now is, whether, being formed, this cause is sufficient to destroy it.

Mr. Clerk, the southern people have heretofore been patient and forbearing under the many injuries which they have received. They have lent too willing ears to the syren songs of those who cried "Peace, peace." Many of them have now despaired of ever witnessing the restoration of amity between the two sections. The embittered and hostile feeling which now prevails in both regions they believe, however much they may regret it, must lead to a dissolution of the Union. If that is to be the inevitable result, is it not better that this separation should be made by mutual agreement, as was done by Abraham and Lot, when "they separated themselves the one from the other?" Yet gentlemen tell us that there must be an appeal to arms; and, in some quarters, the southern States are threatened with subjugation. in case they resist. Thus warned, I trust they will all arm at once for the conflict. Such threats can have no other influence upon a brave and spirited people. They have all the men and materials required for their defense; and, I dare predict, are calmly prepared to meet the issue whenever a wanton infraction of their rights, or an unmistakable evidence of hostile intentions, such as that to which I have alluded, shall render necessary an appeal to the God of justice and the arbitrament of the sword.

If war should follow, as I do not believe that it would, then, unless I am deceived in the spirit of the South, they would make the struggle memorable in after times, by being able to point to many glorious battle-fields, like those of Marathon and Morat, Yorktown and New Orleans. I have no apprehension respecting the final result of such conflict; but I prefer that no conflict should take place. I prefer that the spirit of fanaticism should be quelled; that this crusade against the South should cease; and that we should be afforded what the Constitution intended to assure us-security

and protection in the enjoyment of our rights of person and and property.-Hon. S. Moore, 1859.

LET US ALONE.

SIR, I represent a constituency of NORTHERN LABORERSmen who deem it no disgrace that they earn their subsistence, and lay up a competence for support in after life by their daily labor. So far as social position is concerned, they are the peers of any man on this floor, North or South. And I will resist, by all the powers that God has given me, the extension of a system into their territory which degrades them to the level of the negro slave, and which holds that all who labor, whether black or white, are fit only to be slaves themselves!

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, let me say that we seek no quarrel with the South. This is an issue which they have forced upon us, and, with God's blessing, we will meet it as becomes worthy descendants of patriot sires! You sometimes tell us that all you want is to be let alone. That is precisely what we intend to do. We will interfere with none of your rights. Whatever is "nominated in the bond," that we will yield. In turn is it too much for us to make the same request of you that you will let us alone? If slavery be a blessing, to you shall inure all its benefits. If it be a curse, do not seek to plant it upon our soil-to involve us in its guilt. We desire to cultivate the relations of peace and of fraternal kindness with the people of the South. And we say to them, in the language of one of New England's most gifted poets:

"All that sister States should do-all that free States may, Heart, hand and purse we proffer, as in our early day;

But this one, dark, loathsome burden, ye must struggle with ALONE, And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!"

Hon. M. W. Tappan, 1856.

THE LIMITATION OF SLAVERY RESISTED.

IF slavery be confined to its present limits, the institution. will necessarily be overthrown. It is only a question of time. We have now four million slaves in the fifteen Southern States. That population, doubling itself, according to

the census returns, every twenty-five years, by natural increase to say nothing of African importations-we will in fifty years from now have sixteen millions. What else is true? It is a fact known to all, that in the border counties of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, slavery is almost a nominal thing. Men cannot afford to own slaves where, by crossing an imaginary line, they fall into the hands of our enemies and their friends, who aid them in their flight. Hence you find slave owners in those counties selling off their slaves and crowding them down into the States on the Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico. This operation is going on daily, as every man knows. Confine us within our present limits, and it will not be long before the institution will sink of its own weight. We ought not to wait for that time. Do you think, gentlemen, that we will remain quiet while this is being done? Do you think that we will ever consent to have our four million negroes placed on a footing of equality with ourselves, our wives and children? If you do, I tell you that you reckon without your host. The South will never submit to that state of things. It matters not what evils come upon us; it matters not how deep we may have to wade through blood; we are bound to keep our slaves in their present position. I tell you here, to-day, that the institution of slavery must be sustained. The South has made up its mind to keep the black race in bondage. If we are not permitted to do this inside of the Union, I tell you it will be done outside of it. Yes, sir, and we will expand this institution; we do not intend to be confined within our present limits; and there are not men enough in all your borders to coerce three million armed men in the South, and prevent their going into the surrounding territories.

Hon. Otho R. Singleton, 1859.

A WESTERN CONFEDERACY.

SIR, I will not consent that an honest and conscientious opposition to slavery forms any part of the motives of the leaders of the Republican party. In the earlier stages of the abolition agitation, it may have been otherwise; but not so now. This whole controversy has now become but one of mere sectionalism, a war for political domination, in which slavery performs but the part of the letter x in an algebraic equation, and is used now in the political algebra of the day only to work out the problem of disunion. It was admitted

in 1820, in the beginning, by Rufus King, who hurled the first thunderbolt in the Missouri controversy, to be but a question of sectional power and control. To-day, it exists and is fostered and maintained, because the North has, or believes that she has, the power and numbers and strength and wealth, and every other element which constitutes a State, superior to you of the South. Power has always been arrogant, domineering, wrathful, inexorable, fierce, denying that constitutions and laws were made for it. Power now and here is just what power has been everywhere and in every age. But, gentlemen of the North, you who ignorantly or wittingly are hurrying this Republic to its destruction; you who tell the South to go out of the Union if she dare, and you will bring her back by force or leave her to languish and to perish under your overshadowing greatness; did it never occur to you that when this most momentous but most disastrous of all the events which history shall ever to the end of time record, shall have been brought about, the West, the great West, which you now coolly reckon yours as a province, yours as a fief of your vast empire, may choose, of her own sovereign good will and pleasure, in the exercise of a popular sovereignty which will demand and will have non-intervention, to set up for herself? Did you never dream of a Western Confederacy? Did that horrid phantom never flit across you in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men? Sir, we have fed you; we have clothed you; we have paid tribute to, and enriched you, for now these sixty years. We it is who have built up your marts of commerce; we it is who have caused your manufacturing establishments to flourish. Who made Boston? What built up New York, till now, like Tyre of old, she sits queen of the seas, and her merchant princes and traffickers are among the honorable of the earth? The cotton of the South and the produce of the West. Maintain this Union, and you will have them still. Dissolve this Union, if you dare; send California and Oregon to the Pacific; compel the South into a southern confederacy; force us of the West into a western confederacy; and then tell me what position would you assume among the powers of the earth? Where then would be your pride and arrogance, your trade and business, your commerce and your dominion?

I know well, that within the Union, we of the West are now, and, so far as business and trade are concerned, must ever remain, tributaries to the North. You have made us so by that magnificent network of railroads which stretches now from the Atlantic to and beyond the Mississippi. But be not