social happiness depends on the regulation and conduct of only one single human life! How vastly more of human happiness depends then on the regulation and conduct of the whole nation's thousandfold longer life!

Since I have come before you on this occasion under the influence of these sentiments, you will not expect from me either humorous, exaggerated, passionate or prejudiced speech, but will rather calcu late on an examination of the merits of candidates for public favor, and of the parties by whom those candidates are respectively sustained. It is not my habit to speak largely of candidates. I refrain for two reasons; First, because being necessarily brought into personal combination or conflict with public men, my judgment concerning them is liable to the bias of partiality or of jealousy; secondly, because it is not the habit of parties in our country to select unfit, unworthy or unreliable men to be their representatives. Whatever may be the personal merits or demerits of a candidate, he cannot act otherwise, if he be chosen, than as an agent of the majority to whom he owes his place. The real question, therefore, in every canvass, is, what are the merits of a party by whom a candidate is preferred?-and inquiries concerning the personal characters and dispositions of candidates are wasted on a false and delusive issue. You can try the truth of this position at once, by inquiring of whomsoever assails the candidate of your choice, whether he would give his support to that candidate, abandoning his own, if all his objections could at once be removed. Your opponent, if a candid man, would probably answer in the negative.

But the case is quite different with political parties or masses of citizens. A nation acts at any one time through the consent and activity, not of all its members, but of only a majority, who determine what shall be done, not only for themselves, but for all the citizens. By our individual suffrages, we express our choice whether one class of citizens, with a peculiar policy and peculiar principles, shall rule the country directing it in a course of their own, or whether a different mass with different policy and principles shall conduct it in a different direction. I shall therefore discuss the existing parties freely. You shall judge whether I perform this duty with modera

tion and candor.

In the first place, I must ask you to notice the fact that society is now in a transition state or stage so far as political parties are con

cerned. Two or three years ago, the American people were divided into two well defined, distinct and organized parties, the whigs and the democrats. To-day, instead of these two parties, we see three masses uncertainly defined, and apparently at least quite unorganized, namely, Americans, democrats and republicans; and we see portions of each of these easily detached and passing over to the others, while a very considerable number of citizens stand hesitating whether to join one or the other, or to stand aloof still longer from all.

Such a transition stage, although unusual, is not unnatural. Established parties are built on certain policies and principles, and they will stand and remain so long as those policies and principles are of paramount importance and no longer.

They must break asunder and dissolve when new exigencies bring up new and different policies and principles, and the transition stage will last until the paramount importance of these new policies and principles shall be generally felt and confessed, and no longer.

In a healthy and vigorous republic, the transition stage I have described cannot last long, because in the absence of a firm and decided majority to direct its course, its would fall under the management of feeble and corrupt factions, under whose sway it would rapidly decline, and speedily perish. Our republic, God be thanked, is yet healthy and vigorous, and we already see that society is passing out of the transition stage into the ancient and proper condition. This condition is one which tolerates two firm and enduring parties, no less and no more. There must be two parties, because at every stage of national life some one question of national conduct paramount to all others, presents itself to be decided. Such a question always has two sides, a right side and a wrong side, but no third or middle side. All masses which affect neutrality, as well as all masses which seek to stand independently on questions which have already passed and become obsolete, or on questions which have not yet attained paramount importance, are crowded and crushed in the conflicts between the two which occupy, for the time being, the whole field of contest.

If such an emergency has now occurred presenting a vital question, on which society must divide into two parties, and if those parties are found already present in the political arena, then we are now individually to decide whether to identify ourselves with a mass which will exist uselessly for only a short period, or unite with one

of two parties which will be enduring, and on the fortunes of whose conflict depends the welfare of the republic; and as between these parties whether we shall attach ourselves to the party which will maintain the wrong and perish with it, or to that which shall maintain the right and immediately or ultimately triumph with it.

You yourselves, shall prove by your responses that emergency has occurred, and that question is upon us. What has produced the disorganization and confusion which we have all seen and wondered at, the dissolution of the whig party, and the disorganization of the democratic party, and given room and verge for the American or know-nothing party? You all answer, the agitation of slavery. And you answer truly. Answer again. What shall I discourse upon? The contest of the American colonies with Great Britain, and the characters of the whigs and tories? No, that is a subject for the fourth of July. The adoption of the constitution, and the disputes between federalists and republicans? No, let them sleep. The tariff, National Bank and internal improvements, and the controversies of the whigs and democrats? No, they are past and gone. What then, of Kansas, the admission of Kansas as a free state or `a slave state, the extension of slavery in the territories of the United States? Ah, yes, that is the theme, the extension of slavery, and nothing else. Now of what is it that the Americans in the north and in the south are debating in their councils, so far as their debates are suffered to transpire? The abrogation and restoration of the Missouri compromise and nothing else. The democrats also in the north and south, they speak of nothing else but saving the Union from destruction, by means of suppressing this very debate about the extension of slavery.

Is this question about the extension of slavery new, unreal, and imaginary, the mere illusion of an hour? Is it a wind that "bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." No, it is an ancient and eternal conflict between two entirely antagonistic systems of human labor existing in American society, not unequal in their forces; a conflict for not merely toleration, but for absolute political sway in the republic, between the system of free labor with equal and universal suffrage, free speech free thought, and free action, and the system of slave labor with unequal franchises secured by arbitrary, oppressive and tyrannical laws. It is as old as the republic itself, although it has

never ripened before. It presented itself when the constitution was adopted, and was only temporarily repressed by a compromise which allowed to slaveholding communities three votes for every five. slaves, while it provided at the same time for the abolition of the African slave trade. It presented itself in the continental congress of 1787, and was then put aside only by the passage of the ordinance of 1787, dedicating all the northwest territory to free labor. It occurred again in 1820, threatening to distract the Union, as was thought, and was then again put to rest by another compromise which relinquished Missouri to slave labor, and gave over the territory which now constitutes Kansas and Nebraska to free labor. It occurred again in 1844, when Texas was annexed and was put to sleep for only a short space by the division of Texas, very unequally indeed, into slave soil and free soil. It arose again during the war with Mexico, and was quieted by the memorable compromise of 1850, whose details I need not repeat. It occurred again in 1854, on the opening of Kansas and Nebraska territories to civilization, and was attempted to be put to sleep once more by the adoption in congress of the specious delusion of popular sovereignty. The question that is so old, has presented itself so often and never without disturbing, as it seemed, the very foundations of society, and that has deranged and disorganized all the political combinations of the country, fortified as they were by so many interests, ambitions, and traditions, must be confessed to be a real and enduring if not a vital question. But a moment's examination will serve to satisfy you that it is also a vital question. It is really one in which the parties are a sectional, local class of slaveholders, standing on the unnatural principle of property in human beings, on the one side, and the greater mass of society on the other, who, whether from choice or necessity, are not, cannot, and will not be either slaves or the owners of slaves.

It is a question between a small minority which cannot even maintain itself, except by means of continually increasing concessions and new and more liberal guarantees, and a majority that could never have been induced to grant even any guaranties except by threats of disunion and that can expect no return for new and further concessions and guaranties, but increasing exactions and ultimate aggressions or secessions. The slaveholders can never be content without dominion which abridges personal freedom as well

as circumscribes the domain of the non-slaveholding freêmen. Nonslaveholding freemen can never permanently submit to such dominion. Nor can the competition or contention cease, for the reason that the general conscience of mankind throws its weight on the side of freedom and presses onward the resistants to oppose the solicitations and aggressions of the slaveholding class. Heretofore opposing political combinations long established, and firmly entrenched in traditions and popular affections, have concurred in the policy of suppressing this great and important question, but they have broken under its pressure at last. Henceforth, the antagonistical elements will be left to clash without hindrance. Heretofore the broad field of the national territories allowed each of the contending interests ample room without coming into direct conflict with the other. Henceforth, the two interests will be found contending for common ground claimed by both, and which can be occupied only by one of them.

One other condition remains to be settled, namely, that this great question is imminent and urgent; in other words, that it must be settled and determined without further postponement or delay. How can it be further postponed? If it could be postponed at all, it could be only by the same means which have been used successfully for that purpose heretofore, namely, compromise. Where are the agents for new compromises? The agents of the past compromises are gone. Although they sleep in honored graves, and the mourners over them have not yet quitted the streets, no new compromisers arise to occupy their places. A compromise involves mutual equivalents, something to give and something to take in exchange. Will slavery give you anything? No, it insists on a free right to all the territories. What have you to give in exchange? When you have given up Kansas, you will have relinquished all the territories, for the principle of the relinquishment is that slavery may constitutionally take them all. When compromise is exhausted, what follows? Dispute, contention, contest, conflict.

No! the question is imminent, and must be met now. Kansas, at the last session of congress, voluntarily offered itself as a free state, and demanded to be admitted into the Union, and was rejected. Since that time, the territory has been subjugated by slaveholders, and they having usurped its sovereignty, are organizing a slave'state there which will apply for admission into the Union at the next VOL. IV.

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