is only three hundred and fifty thousand, one-hundredth part of the entire population of the country. If you add their parents, children, immediate relatives and dependents, they are two millions-onefifteenth part of the American people. Slavery is not, and never can be, perpetual. It will be overthrown, either peacefully or lawfully, under this constitution, or it will work the subversion of the constitu tion, together with its own overthrow. Then the slaveholders would perish in the struggle. The change can now be made without violence, and by the agency of the ballot-box. The temper of the nation is just, liberal, forbearing. It will contribute any money and endure any sacrifices to effect this great and important change; indeed, it is half made already.

The will exists, because the evil has become intolerable, and the need of a remedy is universally acknowledged. What, then, is wanted? Organization! Organization! Nothing but organization. Shall we organize? Why not? Can we maintain the revolution, so auspiciously begun, without organization? Certainly not. Are you apprehensive of failure, because the revolution is not everywhere and at all times equally successful? Was there ever a revolution that was equally successful at all times and everywhere? Certainly not. Do you say that you cannot abolish slavery in the privileged states? We have no need, no purpose, no constitutional power, no duty, to do so. Providence has devolved that duty on others, and the organic law leaves it wisely to them. We have power to avert the extension of slavery in the territories of the Union, and that is enough. Do you doubt that power? Did not the statesmen of 1787 know the bounds of constitutional power? Somebody has municipal power in the unorganized territories of the Union. Who is it? It is not any foreign state; it is not any of the American states; it is not the people in the territories. It is the congress of the whole United States, and their power there is supreme. Are you afraid that the privileged class will not submit? The privileged class are human, and they are wise. They know just as well how to submit to just authority, firmly and constitutionally exercised, as they do how to extort unequal concessions by terror from timid men. Can the privileged class live without a Union any better than you can? They would not remain and wrangle with you an hour, if they could do so. Can they ever hope to obtain another Union so favorable to them as this one, if this should be overthrown? Will they destroy

themselves, that they may simply do harm to you? Did ever any privileged class commit such an absurd suicide as this? Are you alone the keepers of the Union? Have not the privileged class interests as great to maintain in the Union, and are their obligations to maintain it different from your own?

How shall we organize? The evil is a national one. The power and the influence and the organization of the privileged class pervade all parts of the Union. It knows no north, no south, no east, no west. It is stronger to-day on the bay of San Francisco, surrounded by freemen, than it is on Chesapeake bay, surrounded by slaves. It is not a sectional but a national contest on which we have entered. Our organization, therefore, must be a national one. The means of success are national. We must restore the demoralized virtue of the nation. We must restore the principle of equality among the members of the state-the principle of the sacredness of the absolute and inherent rights of man. We want, then, an organization open to all classes of men, and that excludes none.

We want a bold, out-spoken, free-spoken organization-one that openly proclaims its principles, its purposes, and its objects-in fear of God, and not of man-like that army, which Cromwell led, that established the commonwealth of England. This is the organization

we want.

It is best to take an existing organization that answers to these conditions, if we can find one; if we cannot find one such, we must create one. Let us try existing parties by this test. Shall we take the know-nothing party, or the American party, as it now more ambitiously names itself? It is a purely sectional organization. In the privileged states, it scouts the principle of the equality of man, and justifies the unbounded claims of the privileged class. In the unprivileged states, it stifles its voice and suppresses your own free speech, lest it may be overheard beyond the Potomac. In the privileged states, it justifies all the wrongs committed against you. In the unprivileged states, it affects to condemn them, but protests that they shall not be redressed. I speak not now of its false and prevaricating rituals, its unlawful and unchristian oaths, its clandestine councils and its dark conspiracies, its mobs and its murders, proscribing and slaying men for their conscience' sake and for the sake of their nativity. I have spoken of them often enough and freely enough heretofore. I say now only that all these equally unfit this

so-called American party for any national duty, and qualify it to be what it has thus far been-an auxiliary Swiss corps, engaging the friends of freedom in premature skirmishes at one time, and decoying them into ambushes prepared by their enemies at another. Let it pass by.

Shall we unite ourselves to the democratic party? If so, to which section or faction? The hards, who are so stern in defending the aggressions of the privileged class, and in rebuking the administration through whose agency they are committed? or the softs, who protest against these aggressions, while they sustain and invigorate that administration? Shall we suppose the democratic party reünited and consolidated? What is it, then, but the same party which has led in the commission of all those aggressions, save one, and which urged, counseled and coöperated in that, and claims exclusively the political benefits resulting from it? Let the democratic party pass.

Shall we report ourselves to the whig party? Where is it? Gentle shepherd, tell me where! Four years ago it was a strong and vigorous party, honorable for energy, noble achievements, and still. more for noble enterprises. In 1852 it was united and consolidated, and moved by panics and fears to emulate the democratic party in its practised subserviency to the privileged class, and it yielded in spite of your remonstrances and mine. The privileged class, who had debauched it, abandoned it, because they knew that it could not vie with its rival in the humiliating service it proffered them; and now there is neither whig party nor whig, south of the Potomac.

How is it in the unprivileged states? Out of New York, the lovers of freedom, disgusted with its prostitution, forsook it, and marched into any and every other organization. We have maintained it here, and in its purity, until the aiders and abettors of the privileged class, in retaliation, have wounded it on all sides, and it is now manifestly no longer able to maintain and carry forward, alone and unaided, the great revolution that it inaugurated. He is unfit for a statesman, although he may be a patriot, who will cling even to an honored and faithful association, when it is reduced so low in strength and numbers as to be entirely ineffectual amid the contests of great parties by which republics are saved. Any party, when reduced so low, must ultimately dwindle and dwarf into a mere faction. Let, then, the whig party pass. It committed a

grievous fault, and grievously hath it answered it. Let it march out of the field, therefore, with all the honors.

The principles of true democrats and the principles of true whigs remain throughout all changes of parties and of men, and, so far as they are sound, they are necessarily the same. Such true democrats and true whigs are now ready to unite on those sound principles common to both. Neither of these two classes can or ought to insist on forcing a defective organization, with a stained banner, upon the other. The republican organization has sagaciously seen this, and magnanimously laid a new, sound and liberal platform, broad enough for both classes to stand upon. Its principles are equal and exact justice; its speech open, decided and frank. Its banner is untorn in former battles, and unsullied by past errors. That is the party for us. I do not know that it will always, or even long, preserve its courage, its moderation, and its consistency. If it shall do so, it will rescue and save the country. If it, too, shall become unfaithful, as all preceding parties have done, it will, without sorrow or regret on my part, perish as they are perishing, and will give place to another, truer and better one.

So long as the republican party shall be firm and faithful to the constitution, the Union, and the rights of man, I shall serve it with the reservation of that personal independence which is my birthright, but, at the same time, with the zeal and devotion that patriotism allows and enjoins. I do not know, and personally I do not greatly care, that it shall work out its great ends this year, or the next, or in my lifetime; because I know that those ends are ultimately sure, and that time and trial are the elements which make all great reformations sure and lasting. I have not thus far lived for personal ends or temporary fame, and I shall not begin so late to live or labor for them. I have hoped that I might leave my country somewhat worthier of a lofty destiny, and the rights of human nature somewhat safer. A reasonable ambition must always be satisfied with sincere and practical endeavors. If, among those who shall come after us, there shall be any curious inquirer who shall fall upon a name so obscure as mine, he shall be obliged to confess that, however unsuccessfully I labored for generous ends, yet that I nevertheless was ever faithful, ever hopeful.

THE CONTEST AND THE CRISIS.

BUFFALO, OCTOBER 19, 1855.

I AM always proud of my native state, when I stand in the presence of the mountains under whose shadow I was born, or on the shores. of the silvery lakes among which I dwell. I am prouder still, when, looking off from the vestibule of the capitol, I see the mediterranean waters of the continent, obedient to her command, mingle their floods with the tides of the world-encircling ocean. No less buoyant is my pride now, when, standing here in the presence of Niagara, the marvel of nature itself, I see New York at once unlocking the gates of the west, and standing sentinel on the frontier of the republic, whose safety constitutes the hope of the human race. Speaking on such a stage, how can I do otherwise than speak thoughtfully, sincerely, earnestly?

Ye good men of Erie! The republican party is sounding throughout all our borders a deep-toned alarum for the safety of the constitution, of union, and of liberty. Do you hear it? The republican party declares, that by means of recent treacherous measures adopted by congress and the president of the United States, the constitutional safeguards of citizens, identical with the rights of human nature itself, are undermined, impaired, and in danger of being overthrown. It declares that if those safeguards be not immediately renewed and restored, the government itself, hitherto a fortress of republicanism, will pass into the hands of an insidious aristocracy, and its batteries be turned against the cause which it was reared to defend.

The republican party is not deficient, either in intelligence, in earnest patriotism, in moderation, or in numbers. Its members everywhere are among those who, in all our political, moral and religious associations, have been as enlightened and as efficient as their fellows. Those who constitute its masses have, some for long periods, and others throughout long lives, been consistent supporters, not only of the constitution, but also of all those principles of jusVOL. IV

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