Mississippi so; but they doubted it. Now let us see how
far his theory and suppositions have been verified. I
infer that he told the people of Mississippi so, for he
makes it a charge in his bill of indictment against me,
that I am hostile to southern rights because I gave those
votes.
Now, what has been the result? My views were
incorporated into the Compromise Measures of 1850, and
his were rejected. Has the South been excluded from all
the territory acquired from Mexico? What says the bill
from the House of Representatives now on your table,
repealing the slave code in New Mexico, established by
the people themselves? It is part of the history of the
country that under this doctrine of non-intervention,
this doctrine that you delight to call squatter sove-
reignty, the people of New Mexico have introduced
and protected Slavery in the whole of that Territory.
Under this doctrine, they have converted a traet of
Free Territory into Slave Territory, more than five
times the size of the State of New-York. Under this
doctrine, Slavery has been extended from the Rio
Grande to the Gulf of California, and from the line of
the Republic of Mexico, not only up to 36 deg. 30 min.,
but up to 38 deg.-GIVING YOU A DEGREE AND A HALF MORE
SLAVE TERRITORY THAN YOU EVER CLAIMED. In 1848 and
1849 and 1850, you only asked to have the line of 36 deg.
80 min. The Nashville convention fixed that as its ulti-
matum. I offered it in the Senate in August, 1848 and it
was adopted here but rejected in the House of Represen-
tatives. You asked only up to 36 deg. 30 min., and non-
intervention has given you Slave Territory up to 38
deg., A DEGREE AND A HALF MORE THAN YOU ASKED;
and yet you say that this is a sacrifice of Southern
rights!

These are the fruits of this principle which the Sena

at

tor from Mississippi regards as hostile to the rights of the South. Where did you ever get any other fruits that were more palatable to your taste or more refreshing to your strength? What other inch of Free Territory has been converted into Slave Territory on the American continent, since the Revolution, except in New Mexico and Arizona, under the principle of non-intervention affirmed Charleston? If it be true that this principle of non-intervention has given to Slavery all New Mexico, which was surrounded on nearly every side by Free Territory, will not the same principle protect you in the northern states of Mexico when they are acquired, since they are now sur rounded by Slave Territory; are several hundred miles further South; have many degrees of greater heat; and have a climate and soil adapted to Southern products? Are you not satisfied with these practical results? Do you desire to appeal from the people of the Territories to the Congress of the United States to settle this question in the Territories? When you distrust the people and appeal to Congress, with both houses largely against you on this question, what sort of protection will you get? Whenever you ask a Slave code from Congress to protect your institutions in a Territory where the people do not want it, you will get that sort of protection which the wolf gives to the lamb; you will get that sort of friendly hug that the grizzly bear gives to the infant. Appealing to an Anti-Slavery Congress to pass laws of protection, with a view of forcing Slavery upon an unwilling and hostile people! Sir, of all the mad schemes that ever could be devised by the South, or by the enemies of the South, that which recognizes the right of Congress to touch the institution of Slavery either in States or Territories, beyond the single case provided in the Constitution for the rendition of fugitive Slaves, is the mos fatal.-Appendix to Congressional Globe, page 814.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT..

A SPEECH BY WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Delivered at Rochester, Monday, Oct. 25, 1858.

FELLOW-CITIZENS: The unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me, show that you are earnest men -and such a man am I. Let us, therefore, at least for a time, pass by all secondary and collateral questions, whether of a personal or of a general nature, and consider the main subject of the present canvass. The Democratic party, or, to speak more accurately, the party which wears that attractive name, is in possession of the Federal Government. The Republicans propose to dislodge that party, and dismiss it from its high trust.

The main subject, then, is, whether the Democractic party deserves to retain the confidence of the American people. In attempting to prove it unworthy, I think that I am not actuated by prejudices against that party, or by prepossessions in favor of its adversary; for I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.

Our country is a theatre, which exhibits in full operation, two radically different political systems; the one resting on the basis of servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor of freemen.

The laborers who are enslaved are all negroes, or persons more or less purely of African derivation. But this is only accidental. The principle of the system is, that labor in every society, by whomsoever performed, is necessarily unintellectual, groveling, and base; and that the laborer, equally for his own good and for the welfare of the State, ought to be enslaved. The white laboring man, whether native or foreigner, is not enslaved, only because he cannot, as yet, be reduced to bondage.

You need not be told now that the slave system is the older of the two, and that once it was universal.

The emancipation of our own ancestors, Caucasians and Europeans as they were, hardly dates beyond a period of five hundred years. The great melioration of human society which modern times exhibit, is mainly due to the incomplete substitution of the system of voluntary labor for the old one of servile labor, which has already taken place. This African slave system is one which, in its origin and in its growth, has been altogether foreign from the habits of the races which colonized these States, established civilization here. It was introduced on

this new continent as an engine of conquest, and for the establishment of monarchical power, by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, and was rapidly extended by them all over South America, Central America, Louisiana, and Mexico. Its legitimate fruits are seen in the poverty, imbecility, and anarchy, which now pervade all Portuguese and Spanish America. The free-labor system is of German extraction, and it was established in our country by emigrants from Sweden, Holland, Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland. We justly ascribe to its influences the strength, wealth, greatness, intelligence, and freedom which the whole American people now enjoy. One of the chief elements of the value of human life is freedom in the pursuit of happiness. The slave system is not only intolerant, unjust, and inhuman toward the laborer, whom, only because he is a laborer, it loads down with chains and converts into merchandise, but is scarcely less severe upon the freeman, to whom, only because he is a laborer from necessity, it denies facilities for employment, and whom it expels from the community because it cannot enslave and convert him into merchandise also. It is necessarily improvident and ruinous, because, as a general truth, communities prosper and flourish or droop and decline in just the degree that they practice or neglect to practice the primary duties of justice and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which is written in the hearts and consciences of men, and therefore is always and everywhere beneficent.

The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defense, to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement.

The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the fields of industrial employment, and all the departments of authority, to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once secures universal contentment, and brings into the highest possible activity all the physical, moral, and social energies of the whole State. In States where the slave system prevails, the masters, directly or indirectly, secure all politist

power, and constitute a ruling aristocracy. In States where the free-labor system prevails, universal suffrage necessarily obtains, and the State inevitably becomes, sooner or later, a republic or democracy.

Russia yet maintains Slavery, and is a despotism. Most of the other European States have abolished Slavery, and adopted the system of free labor. It was the antagonistic political tendencies of the two systems which the first Napoleon was contemplating when he predicted that Europe would ultimately be either all Cossack or all Republican. Never did human sagacity utter a more pregnant truth. The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous. But they are more than incongruous-they are incompatible. They never have permanently existed together in one country, and they never can. It would be easy to demonstrate this impossibility, from the irreconcilable contrast between their great principles and characteristics. But the experience of mankind has conclusively established it. Slavery, as I have already intimated, existed in every state in Europe. Free labor has supplanted it everywhere except in Russia and Turkey. State necessities developed in modern times, are now obliging even those two nations to encourage and empl:y free labor; and already, despotic as they are, we find them engaged in abolishing Slavery. In the United States, Slavery came into collision with free labor at the close of the last century, and fell before it in New-England, New-York, NewJersey, and Pennsylvania, but triumphed over it effectually, aud excluded it for a period yet undetermined, from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Indeed, so incompatible are the two systems, that every new State which is organized within our ever-extending domain makes its first political act a choice of the one and an exclusion of the other, even at the cost of civil war, if necessary. The Slave States, without law, at the last national election, successfully forbade, within their own limits, even the casting of votes for a candidate for President of the United States supposed to be favorable to the establishment of the free-labor system in new States.

Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different States, but side by side within the American Union. This has happened because the Union is a confederation of States. But in another aspect the United States constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling the States out to their very borders, together with a new and extended net-work of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus, these antagonistic systems are continually coming in o closer contact, and collision results.

whole structure of Government broadly on the principle that all men are created equal, and therefore free-little dreaming that, within the short period of one hundred years, their descendants would bear to be told by any orator, however popular, that the utterance of that principle was merely a rhetorical rhapsody; or by any judge however venerated, that it was attended by mental reservations, which rendered it hypocritical and false. By the Ordinance of 1787, they dedicated all of the national domain not yet polluted by Slavery to free labor immediately, thenceforth and forever; while by the new Constitution and laws they invited foreign free labor from all lands under the sun, and interdicted the importation of African Slave Labor, at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances whatsoever. It is true that they necessarily and wisely modified this policy of Freedom, by leaving it to the several States, affected as they were by differing circumstances, to abolish Slavery in their own way and at their own pleasure, instead of confiding that duty to Congress, and that they secured to the Slave States, while yet retaining the system of Slavery, a three-fifths representation of slaves in the Federal Government, until they should find themselves able to relinquish it with safety. But the very nature of these modifications fortifies my position that the fathers knew that the two systems could not endure within the Union, and expected that within a short period Slavery would disappear forever. Moreover, in order that these modifications might not altogether defeat their grand design of a Republic maintaining universal equality, they provided that two-thirds of the States might amend the Constitution.

It remains to say on this point only one word, to guard against misapprehension. If these States are to again become universally slaveholding, I do not pretend to say with what violations of the Constitution that end shall be accomplished. On the other hand, while I do confidently believe and hope that my country will yet become a land of universal Freedom, I do not expect that it will be made so otherwise than through the action of the several States coöperating with the Federal Government, and all acting in strict conformity with their respective Constitutions.

The strife and contentions concerning Slavery, which gently-disposed persons so habitually deprecate, are nothing more than the ripening of the conflict which the fathers themselves, not only thus regarded with favor, but which they may be said to have instituted.

It is not to be denied, however, that thus far the course of that contest has not been according to their humane anticipations and wishes. In the field of federal politics, Slavery, deriving unlooked-for advantages from commercial changes, and energies unforeseen from the facilities of combination between members of the slaveholding class and between that class and other property classes, early rallied, and has at length made a stand, not merely to rethroughout the whole Union. It is certain that the slaveholding class of American citizens indulge this high ambition, and that they derive encouragement for it from the rapid and effective political successes which they have already obtained. The plan of operation is this: By continued appliances of patronage and threats of disunion, they will keep a majority favorable to these designs in the Senate, where each State has an equal representation. Through that majority they will defeat, as they best can, the admission of Free States, and secure the admission of Slave States. Under the protection of the Judiciary, they will, on the principle of the Dred Scott case, carry Slavery into all the Territories of the United States now existing, and hereafter to be organized. By the action of the President and the Senate, using the treaty-making power, they will annex foreign slaveholding States. In a favorable conjuncture they will induce Congress to repeal the act of 1808, which prohibits the foreign slave-trade, and so they will import from Africa, at the cost of only $20 a head, slaves enough to fill up the interior of the continent. Thus relatively increasing the number of Slave States, they will allow no amendment to the Constitution prejudicial to their interest; and so, having permanently established their power, they expect the Federal Judiciary to nullify all State laws which shall interfere with internal or foreign commerce in slaves. When the Free States shall be sufficiently demoralized to tolerate these designs, they reasonably conclude that Slavery will be accepted by those States themselves. I shall not stop to show how speedy or how complete would be the ruin which the accomplishment of these slaveholding schemes would bring upon the country. For one, I should not remain in the country to test the sad experiment. Having spent my manhood, though not my whole life, in a Free State, no aristocracy of any kind, much less an aristocracy of slaveholders, shall ever make the laws of the land in which I shall be content to live. Having seen the society around me universally engaged in

Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of in-tain its original defensive position, but to extend its sway terested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New-York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New-York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men. It is the failure to apprehend this great truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at final compromise between the Slave and Free States, and it is the existence of this great fact that renders all such pretended compromises, when made, vain and ephemeral. Startling as this saying may appear to you, fellow-citizens, it is by no means an original or even a modern one. Our forefathers knew it to be true, and unanimously acted upon it when they framed the Consticution of the United States. They regarded the exist ence of the servile system in so many of the States with sorrow and shame, which they openly confessed, and they looked upon the collision between them, which was then just revealing itself, and which we are now accustomed to deplore, with favor and hope. They knew that either the one or the other system must exclusively prevail.

Unlike too many of those who in modern times invoke their authority, they had a choice between the two. They preferred the system of free labor, and they determined to organize the Government, and so to direct its activity, that that system should surely and certainly prevail. For this purpose, and no other, they based the

To expect the Democratic party to resist Slavery and favor Freedom, is as unreasonable as to look for Protestant missionaries to the Catholic Propaganda of Rome. The history of the Democratic party commits it to the policy of Slavery. It has been the Democratic party, and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its preSuch is the Democratic party. It has no policy, State sent alarming culmination. Without stopping to ascertain, or Federal, for finance or trade, or manufacture, or comcritically, the origin of the present Democratic party, we merce, or education, or internal improvements, or for the may concede its claim to date from the era of good feeling protection or even the security of civil or religious libwhich occurred under the Administration of President erty. It is positive and uncompromising in the interest Monroe. At that time, in this State, and about that time of Slavery-negative, compromising and vacillating, in in many others of the Free States, the Democratic party regard to everything else. It boasts its love of equality deliberately disfranchised the free colored, or African citi- and wastes its strength, and even its life, in fortifying the sen, and it has pertinaciously continued this disfranchise- only aristocracy known in the land. It professes fraterment ever since. This was an effective aid to Slavery;nity, and, so often as Slavery requires, allies itself with for while the slaveholder votes for his slaves against Free-proscription. It magnifies itself for conquests in foreign dom, the freed slave in the Free States is prohibited from lands, but it sends the national eagle forth always with voting against Slavery. chains, and not the olive branch, in his fangs.

cratic party has left only one yet to be consummated-too conservative for others. As if any party ever foresaw the abrogation of the law which forbids the African slave t. ade.

Now, I know very well that the Democratic party has, at every stage of these proceedings, disavowed the motive and the policy of fortifying and extending Slavery, and has excused them on entirely different and more plausible grounds. But the inconsistency and frivolity of these pleas prove still more conclusively the guilt I charge upon that party. It must, indeed, try to excuse such guilt before mankind, and even to the consciences of its own adherents. There is an instinctive abhorrence of Slavery, and an inborn and inhering love of Freedom in the human heart, which renders palliation of such gross misconduct indispensable. It disfranchised the free African on the ground of a fear that, if left to enjoy the right of suffrage, he might seduce the free white citizen into amalgamation with his wronged and despised race. The Democratic party condemned and deposed John Quincy Adams, because he expended $12,000,000 a year, while it justifies his favored successor in spending $70,000,000, $80,000,000, and even $10,000,000, a year. It denies emancipation in the District of Columbia, even with compensation to masters and the consent of the people, on the ground of an implied constitutional inhibition, although the Constitution expressly confers upon Congress sovereign legislative power in that District, and although the Democratic party is tenacious of the principle of strict construction. It violated the express provisions of the Constitution in suppressing petition and debate on the subject of Slavery, through fear of disturbance of the public harmony, although it claims that the electors have a right to instruct their representatives, and even deinand their resignation in cases of contumacy. It extended Slavery over Texas, and connived at the attempt to spread it across the Mexican territories, even to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, under a plea of enlarging the area of Freedom. It abrogated the Mexican slave law and the Missouri Compromise prohibition of Slavery in Kansas, not to open the new Territories to Slavery, but to try therein the new and fascinating theories of Non-intervention and Popular Sovereignty; and, finally, it overthrew both these new and elegant systems by the English Lecompton bill and the Dred Scott decision, on the ground that the Free States ought not to enter the Union without a population equal to the representative basis of one member of Congress, although Slave States might come in without inspection as to their numbers.

Will any member of the Democratic party now here claim that the authorities chosen by the suffrages of the party transcended their partisan platforms, and so misrepresented the party in the various transactions I have recited? Then I ask him to name one Democratic statesman or legislator, from Van Buren to Walker, who either timidly or cautiously like them, or boldly or defiantly like Douglas, ever refused to execute a behest of the slaveholders, and was not therefor, and for no other cause, immediately denounced, and deposed from his trust, and repudiated by the Democratic party for that contumacy.

I think, fellow-citizens, that I have shown you that it is high time for the friends of Freedom to rush to the rescue of the Constitution, and that their very first duty is to dismiss the Democratic party from the administration of the Government.

Why shall it not be done? All agree that it ought to be done. What, then, shall prevent its being done? Nothing but timidity or division of the opponents of the Democratic party.

Some of these opponents start one objection, and some another. Let us notice these objections briefly. One class say that they cannot trust the Republican party; that it has not avowed its hostility to Slavery boldly enough, or its affection for Freedom earnestly enough. I ask in reply, is there any other party which can be more safely trusted? Every one knows that it is the Republican party or none, that shall displace the Democratic party. But I answer further, that the character and fidelity of any party are determined, necessarily, not by its pledges, programmes, and platforms, but by the public exigencies, and the temper of the people when they call it into activity. Subserviency to Slavery is a law written not only on the forehead of the Democratic party, but also in its very soul-so resistance to Slavery, and devotion to Freedom, the popular elements now actively working for the Republican party among the people, must and will be the resources for its ever-renewing strength and constant invigoration.

Others cannot support the Republican party, because it it has not sufficiently exposed its platform, and determined what it will do, and what it will not do, wher triumphant. It may prove too progressive for some, and

so clearly the course of future events as to plan a universal scheme for future action, adapted to all possible emergencies. Who would ever have joined even the Whig party of the Revolution, if it had been obliged to answer, in 1775, whether it would declare for Independence in 1776, and for this noble Federal Constitution of ours in 1787, and not a year earlier or later?

The people of the United States will be as wise next year, and the year afterward, and even ten years hence, as we are now. They will oblige the Republican party to act as the public welfare and the interests of justice and humanity shall require, through all the stages of its career, whether of trial or triumph.

Others will not venture an effort, because they fear that the Union would not endure the change. Will such objectors tell me how long a Constitution can bear a strain directly along the fibres of which it is composed? This is a Constitution of Freedom. It is being converted into a Constitution of Slavery. It is a republican Constitution. It is being made an aristocratic one. Others wish to wait until some collateral questions concerning temperance, or the exercise of the elective franchise are properly settled. Let me ask all such persons, whether time enough has not been wasted on these points already, without gaining any other than this single advantage, namely, the discovery that only one thing can be effectually done at one time, and that the one thing which must and will be done at any one time is just that thing which is most urgent, and will no longer admit of postponement or delay. Finally, we are told by faint-hearted men that they despond; the Democratic party, they say, is unconquerable, and the dominion of Slavery is consequently inevitable. I reply to them, that the complete and universal dominion of Slavery would be intolerable enough when it should have come after the last possible effort to escape should have been made. There would, in that case, be left to us the consoling reflection of fidelity to duty.

But I reply, further, that I know-few, I think, know better than I-the resources and energies of the Democratic party, which is identical with the Slave Power. 1 do ample prestige to its traditional popularity. I know further-few, I think, know better than I-the difficulties and disadvantages of organizing a new political force like the Republican party, and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring without prestige and without patronage. But, notwithstanding all this, I know that the Democratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must rise into its place. The Democatic party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as it practiced this principle faithfully, it was invulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has maintained itself, not by virtue of its own strength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there as yet had appeared in the political field no other party that had the conscience and the courage to take up, and avow, and practice the life-inspiring principles which the Democratic party had surrendered. At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows now, as the Republican party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith_and its works, "Equal and exact justice to all men." Even when it first entered the field, only half organized, it struck a blow which only just failed to secure complete and triumphant victory. In this, its second campaign, it has already won advantages which render that triumph now both easy and certain.

The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party of one idea; but that idea is a noble one- an idea that fills and expands all generous souls; the idea of equality-the equality of all men be fore human tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before the Divine tribunal and Divine laws.

I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty Senators and a hundred Representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opinions and principles of Freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free State, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the Government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to Slavery, the people of the United States have been no less steadily and perso veringly gathering together the forces with which to re cover back again all the fields and all the castles which have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the Constitution and Freedom forever.

"NEGRO SLAVERY NOT UNJUST."

A SPEECH BY CHARLES O'CONOR,

At the Union Meeting at the Academy of Music, New York City, Dec. 19, 1859.

MR. MAYOR AND GENTLEMEN: I cannot express to you told in the legislative assemblies of our Northern States, the delight which I experience in beholding in this great not merely by speakers, but by distinct resolutions of the city so vast an assembly of my fellow citizens, convened whole body-we are told by gentlemen occupying seats in for the purpose stated in your resolutions. I am delight- the Congress of the Union through the votes of Northern ed beyond measure to behold at this time so vast an people-that the Constitution seeks to enshrine, to protect, assembly responding to the call of a body so respectable to defend a monstrous crime against justice and humanity, as the twenty thousand New Yorkers who have convened and that it is our duty to defeat its provisions, to outwit this meeting. If anything can give assurance to those who them, if we cannot otherwise get rid of their effect, and to doubt, and confidence to those who may have had mis- trample upon the rights which it has declared shall be progivings as to the permanency of our institutions, and the tected and insured to our brethren of the South. (Apsolidity of the support which the people of the North are plause.) That is now the doctrine advocated. And I ask prepared to give them, it is that i the queen city of the whether that doctrine, necessarily involving the destrucNew World, in the capital of North America, there is tion of our Union, shall be permitted to prevail as it has assembled a meeting so large, so respectable, and so hitherto prevailed? Gentlemen, I trust you will excuse me unanimous as this meeting has shown itself to be in re- | for deliberately coming up to and meeting this questionceiving sentiments which, if observed, must protect our not seeking to captivate your fancies by a trick of words Union from destruction, and even from danger. (Ap--not seeking to exalt your imaginations by declamation plause.) Gentlemen, is it not a subject of astonishment or by any effort at eloquence-but meeting this question that the idea of danger, and the still more dreadful idea gravely, sedately, and soberly, and asking you what is to of dissolution, should be heard from the lips of an Ameri- be our course in relation to it? Gentlemen, the Constitucan citizen, at this day, in reference to, or in connection tion guarantees to the people of the Southern States the with, the sacred name of this most sacred Union? protection of their slave property. In that respect it is a (Applause.) Why gentlemen, what is our Union? What solemn compact between the North and the South. As a are its antecedents? What is its present condition? If solemn compact are we at liberty to violate it? (Cries of we ward off the evils which threaten it, what its future "No, no!") Are we at liberty to seek or take any mean, hope for us and for the great family of mankind? Why petty advantage of it? (Cries of "No, no!") Are we at gentlemen, it may well be said of this Union as a govern- liberty to con over its particular words, and to restrict and ment, that as it is the last offspring, so is it Time's most to limit its operation, so as to acquire, under such narrow glorious and beneficent production. Gentlemen, we are construction, a pretence of right by hostile and adverse created by an Omniscient Being. We are created by a legislation? ("No, no!")-to interfere with the interests, Being not only All-Seeing, but All-Powerful and All-Wise. wound the feelings, and trample on the political rights of And in the benignity and the farseeing wisdom of His our Southern fellow-citizens? ("No, no, no!") No, gentlepower, He permitted the great family of mankind to live men. If it be a compact, and has anything sacred in it, we are on, to advance, to improve, step by step, and yet permit- bound to observe it in good faith, honestly and honorably, ted five thousand years and upward to elapse ere He laid not merely to the letter, but fully to the spirit, and not in the foundation of a truly free, a truly happy, and a truly any mincing, half-way, unfair, or illiberal construction, independent empire. It was not, gentlemen, until that seeking to satisfy the letter, to give as little as we can, and great length of time had elapsed, that the earth was thereby to defeat the spirit. (Applause.) That may be the deemed mature for laying the foundations of this mighty way that some men keep a contract about the sale of a house and prosperous State. It was then that He inspired the or of a chattel, but it is not the way honest men observe connoble-minded and chivalrous Genoese to set forth upon tracts, even in relation to the most trivial things. ("True," the trackless ocean and discover the empire that we now and applause.) What has been done, having a tendency enjoy. But a few years, comparatively, had elapsed to disturb harmony under this Constitution, and to break when there was raised up in this blessed land a set of men down and destroy the union now existing between these whose like had never before existed upon the face of this States? Why, gentlemen, at an early period the subject earth. Men unequalled in their perceptions of the true of Slavery, as a mere philosophical question, was discussed principles of justice, in their comprehensive benevolence, by many, and its justice or injustice made the subject of in their capacity to lay safely, justly, soundly, and with argument leading to various opinions. It mattered little all the qualities which should insure permanency, the how long this discussion should last, while it was confined foundations of an empire. It was in 1776, and in this within such limits. If it had only led to the formation of country, that there assembled the first, the very first, societies like the Shakers, who do not believe in matriassembly of rational men who ever proclaimed, in clear mony; societies like the people of Utah, destined to a and undeniable form, the immutable principles of liberty, short career, who believe in too much of it (laughter); or and consecrated, to all time i trust, in the face of tyrants, societies of people like the strong-minded women of our and in opposition to their power, the rights of natious and country, who believe that women are much better qualithe rights of men. (Applause.) These patriots, as soon fied than men to perform the functions and offices usually as the storm of war had passed away, sat down and performed by men (laughter)—and who probably would, framed that instrument upon which our Union rests, the if they had their way, simply change the order of proceed Constitution of the United States of America, (Applause.) ings, and transfer the husband to the kitchen, and themAnd the question now before us is neither more nor less selves to the field or the cabinet. (Laughter and apthan this: whether that Constitution, consecrated by the plause.) So long, I say, as this sentimentality touching blood shed in that glorious Revolution, consecrated by Slavery confined itself to the formation of parties and sothe signature of the most illustrious man who ever lived, cieties of this description, it certainly could do no great George Washington (applause)—whether that instrument, harm, and we might satisfy ourselves with the maxim that accepted by the wisest and by the best of that day, and "Error can do little harm as long as truth is left free to comaccepted in convention, one by one, in each and every bat it." But unfortunately gentlemen, this sentimentality State of this Union-that instrument from which so many has found its way out of the meeting-houses-from among blessings have flown-whether that instrument was con- pious people, assemblies of speculative philosophers, and ceived in crime, is a chapter of abominations (cries of societies formed to benefit the inhabitants of Barioboola"No, no,") is a violation of justice, is a league between gha-it has found its way into the heart of the selfish polistrong-handed but wicked-hearted white men to oppress, tician; it has been made the war-cry of party; it has been and impoverish, and plunder their fellow-creatures, con- made the instrument whereby to elevate not merely to trary to rectitude, honor and justice. (Applause.) This personal distinction and social rank, but to political power is the question, neither more nor less. We are tol! from Throughout the non-slaveholding States of this Union, men pulpits, we are told from the political rostrum, ve are have been thus elevated who advocate a course of con.