the negro slaves. They take a slave at three-fifths of a man, and they represent the three-fifths; I doubt not they would be very glad if he could be converted into five-fifths.

Well I think the democratic party has not so much repugnance to negroes and the negro question, because they consent to take offices of president, vice-president, secretary of state, ministers to Bogota, and to all other parts of the world, consulships and post offices, that are derived indirectly by adding another link to the chain of states in which negroes count, each one, three-fifths. No, no; slaveholders and the democratic party would be very glad to take votes from negroes, free or slave, by the head, at full count, if negroes and slaves would only vote for slavery; and it is only because they have a sagacious insight into human nature, which teaches them that negroes and slaves would vote for liberty, that makes the negro question so repulsive to them.

But is this one idea, the eternal negro question, so objectionable merely on account of the negro? I think not; I think it far otherwise; for after all, you see that the negro has less than anybody else in the world, to do with it. The negro is no party to it; he is only an incident; he is a subject of disputes but not one of the liti gants. He has just as much to do with it as a horse or a watch in a justice's court, when two neighbors are litigating about its ownership. The controversy is not with the negro at all, but with two classes of white men, one who have a monopoly of negroes, and the other who have no negroes. One is an aristocratic class, that wants to extend itself over the new territories and so retain the power it already exercises; and the other is yourselves, my good friends, men who have no negroes and won't have any, and who mean that the aristocratic system shall not be extended. There is no negro question about it at all. It is an eternal question between classesbetween the few privileged and the many unprivileged-the eternal question between aristocracy and democracy.

A sorrowful world this will be when that question shall be put. to rest; for when it is, the rest that it shall have, shall be the same it has always had for six thousand years; the riding of the privileged over the necks of the unprivileged, booted and spurred. And the nation that is willing to establish such an aristocracy, and is shamed out of the defense of its own rights, deserves no better fate than that which befalls the timid, the cowardly and the unworthy.

It is to-day in the United States the same question that is filling Hungary, and is lifting the throne of a Cæsar of Austria from its pedestals; the same which has expelled the tyrant of Naples from the beautiful Sicily, and has driven him from his palace at Castellamare to seek shelter in his fortress at Gaeta. It is not only an eternal question, but it is a universal question. Every man from a foreign land will find here in America, in another form, the irrepressible conflict which crushed him out, an exile from his native land.

Again, I am not quite convinced that it is sound philosophy in anything, at least in politics, to banish the principle of giving paramount importance at any one time to one idea. If a man wishes to secure a good crop of wheat to pay off the debt he owes upon his land, he is seized with one idea in the spring, he plows, plants and sows, he gathers and reaps, with a single idea of getting forty bushels to the acre, if he can. If a merchant wishes to be successful, he surrenders himself to the one idea of buying as cheap and selling as dear as he honestly can. I would not give much for a lawyer who is put in charge of my case, that would suffer himself, when before the jury, to be distracted with a great many irrelevant ideas. I want one devoted to my cause. In the church we have a great many clergymen who have a horror of this one idea involved in the negro question, but I think it was St. Peter who had it made known to him, in a vision on the housetop, that he must not have scattered ideas; but on the contrary adopt one idea only, that of being satisfied with everything else, provided he could only win souls to his Master. And Paul was very much after this spirit; he said he would be all things to all men, provided he could save some souls. There was in the revolution one man seized with a terrible fanaticism, propelled by one idea He scattered terror all through this continent; and when he passed from Boston to the first congress' in Philadelphia, deputations from New York and Philadelphia went out to meet and dissuade this erratic man of that one idea, namely, that of national independence. And still John Adams proved, after all, to be a public benefactor. There was, during the revolution, another man of one idea, that appeared to burn in him so ardently that he was regarded as the most dangerous man on the continent, and a triple reward was offered for his head. He actually went so far as to take all the men of one idea in the country, and suffer himself to take command of them in a rebellion. That man was George Washington.

His idea was justice, political justice. There was another monomaniac of the same kind down in Virginia; he, at the close of the revolution, had one idea, an eternal idea, and it even included negroes; and that was the idea of equality. This was Thomas Jefferson. Now, though the state which reared him might be glad if it could erase from his monument at Monticello its sublime inscription, yet the world can never lose that proud and beautiful epitaph, written by himself: "Here lies Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence." About the year 1805 or 1806, the French secretary for foreign affairs gave a dinner to the American representative at court, and to American citizens resident there, and there was a large and various party. When the wine flowed freely, and conversation ought to have been general, there was one young man who was possessed with one idea, and he could not keep quiet, but kept continually putting this idea before the minister and his guests, saying, "If you will only make up for me a purse, or show me a bank that will lend me five thousand dollars, I will put a boat on the Hudson river which will make the passage from New York to Albany at four miles an hour, without being driven by oars or sails." He was an offensive monomaniac, that Robert Fulton. But still, had it not been for his one idea, Iowa would have slept the last forty years, and down to the twentieth century, and not one human being before me, or within the boundaries of this state, would have resided here. What I understand by one idea is this: It simply means that a man, or a people, or a state, is in earnest. They get an idea which they think is useful, and they are in earnest. to abandon confidence in earnest men, and take to following trivial men of light minds, confused and scattered ideas, and weak purposes.

God save us when we are

There is no such thing as government carried out without the intervention, the exaltation of one idea, and without the activity, guidance and influence of earnest men. You may be listless, indifferent, indolent, each one of you; do you therefore get other people to go to sleep? No. You may go to sleep, but you will find somebody, that has got one idea that you don't like, will be wide awake. Democrats are wide awake on the negro question as long as it pays, and it pays just as long as you will be content to follow their advice and take several ideas. Industry is the result of one idea. I have never heard of idle ones in the beaver's camp, but I do know there are drones in the beehive. Nevertheless, the

beaver's camp and the beehive alike give evidence of the domination of one idea. The Almighty Power himself could never have made the world, and never govern it, if he had not bent the force and application of the one idea to make it perfect. And when at seven o'clock in the morning, three months ago, with the almanac in my hand, I stood with my smoked glass between my eye and the sun to see whether the almanac maker was correct or whether nature vacillated between one idea and another, I was astonished to see that, at the very second of time indicated by the astronomer, the shadow of the moon entered the disk of the sun. There was one idea only in the mind of the Omnipotent Creator, that six thousand, or ten thousand, or twenty thousand, or hundreds of thousands of years ago, set that sun, that moon and this earth in their places, and subjected them to laws which brought that shadow exactly at this point at that instant of time. Earth is serious; heaven is serious; earth is earnest; heaven is earnest. There is no place for men of scattered and confused ideas in the earth below, or in the heavens above, whatever there may be in places under the earth. Every one idea has its negative. It has its destinies, its purpose, and it has its negative. So it is with the idea of slavery. It means nothing less, nothing more, nothing different from the extension of commerce or trading in slaves; and in our national system it means the extension of commerce in slaves into regions where that commerce has no right to exist. The negative of that is our principle which we are endeavoring to inculcate upon you, namely: opposition to trading in slaves within those portions of the territory where slaves are not lawfully a subject of merchandise."

At the time of the compromise of 1820, the democratic party saw, for they are wise men, and their opponents, Rufus King, John W. Taylor and others in congress, saw, that there was an irrepressible conflict between the two ideas of slavery and freedom, or rather between the two sides of one idea. The alternative offered to the democracy and to all the people of the United States, was a plain one; the slaveholders are strong, are united; there are many slave states, and they are agreed in their policy; there are as many free states, but they are divided in opinion. Lend your support to the slave states, and you shall have the power, patronage, honors and glory of administering the government of the United States. Some asked, for how long? Wise men cast the horoscope and said forty

years; just about that time an infant state shall grow up north of Missouri within the Louisiana purchase, and another shall grow up in Kansas. The great men I have named seemed few and feeble in numbers; still they would rather have quiet consciences during all the time, and postpone honors and rewards for forty years, rather than to take the side of slavery; and the democratic party reasoning otherwise, said, "Give us the offices and power now; we will hold it the forty years, and more if we can." They say that the "old one" is inexorable; that when he makes a bond he lives up to it, but when the time is up he calls for his own. To Mr. Breckinridge, Mr. Douglas, slave states and all, he says: "I have given you all the indulgence that was allowed me to give you, now you must go."

This, my young friends, for I see many such around me, brings me to a point where I can give you one instruction which, if you practice as long as you live, may make at least some of you great men, honorable men, useful men. Remember that all questions have two sides; one is the right side, and the other the wrong side; one is the side of justice, the other that of injustice; one the side of human nature, the other of crime. If you take the right side, the just side, ultimately men, however much they may oppose you and revile you, will come to your support; earth with all its powers will work with you and for you, and Heaven is pledged to conduct you to complete success. If you take the other side, there is no power in earth or Heaven that can lead you through successfully, because it is appointed in the councils of Heaven that justice, truth and reason alone can prevail. This instruction would be incomplete if I were not to add one other, that indifference between right and wrong is nothing else than taking the wrong side. The policy of a great leader of the democratic party in the north is indifference; it is nothing to him whether slavery is voted up or voted down in the territories. Thus it makes no difference to that distinguished statesman whether slavery is voted up or voted down in the new states; whether they all become slave states or free states. Let us see how this would have worked in the revolution. If Jefferson had been indifferent as to whether congress voted up the declaration of independence or voted it down, what kind of a time would he have had with it. Patrick Henry would have been after him with a vigilant committee, and he would now have no monument over his remains.