from the chairs of governors and presidents. What the Madisons and Jeffersons, the Hancocks and Storys, would have approved was denounced and proscribed by the Van Burens and Everetts of this generation.

Still they fought for the right. It may be with lack of discretion, yet how shall you and I in our idleness dare to take up a railing accusation against them? How dare you say that William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson, Orange Scott, and their compeers were not the wisest of their generation in action, as they certainly were in their fears, their prophecies, and their entreaties? Their errors will yet be lost in the splendor of their daring, sincerity, and zeal. If ever freedom becomes the possession, as it is the birthright, of every man in this land, he who will be honored with the loftiest monument - a monument built by every hand that has been raised against him will be that yet hated and proscribed, that somewhat error-led, but far more truth-led, man, William Lloyd Garrison.

This stone, cut out of the mountain without hands, rolled by few but tireless arms, grew, and grew, until, when the slave power set up its claim to national domain, a new voice mingled in the tumults of the hour, and made its triumphs Bunker Hill victorics, that betokened an ultimate destruction.

Again the anaconda stirs. It demands Texas-Texas with a war; and it wins. It claims that the new regions acquired by war should be his, and they are given it. Maddened with lust and success, it says, "Return to me my fugitives hiding in your own Free States; give me that nurse and playmate of your children; that industrious citizen whose family looks up to him for protection; the minister from the altar. They are mine." And all the people hasten to give them up. No, not all. Among the faithless, faithful stood a few. Seven thousand were found who bent not the knee to this Baal of America.

May they soon become seventy times seven, and deliver the land from this idolatry and the Jezreel abominations which so fiercely flourish under its dominion.

Even then the proposition that has just been successfully carried would have been rejected with abhorrence. Great and little politicians declared that these concessions were made only because the Constitution demanded it. Their sacrifice was Jephtha's, but so was their necessity, and their lamentation. But any attempt to remove an ancient landmark, any disturbance of ancient settlements, will never be allowed. No concessions to slavery. O, no! Only a painful fulfillment of agreements which our fathers made, only a declining to exasperate our brethren of the South by a useless proviso; and so, by soft words and a flattering tongue, by a heart that deceived itself, the government became the bloodhound of the slaveholder, to track and catch his God-like property. So our vast possessions, acquired by our blood and treasure, became an Aceldama, a field of blood unto this day. And great men and good men shouted loud hosannas over these peaceful measures, and declared that He who holdeth the winds in Ilis fists would bind these contending breezes, and that there should be a great calm.

Ah! the anaconda was only resting from his bloody feasts. Now and then he opes his ponderous jaws, and swallows down, as a sweet morsel, the body and the soul of a Long, or a Sims, some poor Christian free man or free woman. But its fell hunger does not yet gnaw within. And we only said, "It is the price of the Union, this precious Union. It is the condition of our country's existence. Throw the slave Daniel into the Southern den of lions. Our farms, our stores, our schools, must flourish even if a few negroes suffer slightly. They are half brutes. They cannot feel the chains, the whip, the auctionblock, the breaking of heart-strings, the fiery stake of

death. What are they compared with our great and glorious Union? Off with their heads!'"' And on we marched, and boasted, and declared ourselves the standard-bearers of the race, and called on Europe to witness our glory, to fall at our feet, and follow our illustrious leadership to universal democracy. But that great serpent awoke; nay, rather, he never slept. He bided his time; and when our boasts were loudest, and political calm the deepest, he said, "Give up that useless Missouri Compromise. It aggravates the South. It does you no good. It will make no difference in the end. Slavery can never flourish in those territories. Don't wound our feelings by adhering to its punctilios. doned the Wilmot Proviso,

You very generously abanbecause of our sensitiveness.

Do the generous thing once more."

We were struck aghast. "Give up the Compromise'? Open the gates of the Eden of the continent to this river of death, that has burned and blackened so many fair fields? Never! The Thirteen States fought eight years. rather than submit to foreign tyranny. We will fight as long rather than surrender a domain twice as large as the Colonies embraced to a domestic tyranny immeasurably worse." Loud rose the cry: "It is ours. It shall remain ours. And behold, while we cry, our representatives hold it out to the greedy clutch of the slaveholder. It is grasped. It is swallowed, and to-day the arch tempter is the sole ruler in that Paradise. Freedom, intelligence, and enterprise, art, civilization, and Christianity, every grace and strength of humanity, have fled, as the angels that frequented the holy Eden, and Satan, sin, and death revel in its desecrated forests and prairies, their unquestioned possession.

Thus these things are. Not by one step, nor two, have we reached this goal, but by a practical imbruting of the conscience, by yielding to the demands of this awful

iniquity, by violently opposing and abusing its earnest enemies. Had not these members of Congress fought against the anti-slavery movement with furious passion, they would not be found to-day enacting this bill. The light that was in them is darkness; and how great is that darkness! What an awful depth upon depth of darkness! Great men in the pulpit and the forum set the bad example of mocking at the higher law, and now their bayers on deride the very law which they so idolatrously worship. So comes Pandemonium, no law, but Chaos and old Night.

"Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo, thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:

Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all."

Verily as we have sown, so do we reap this day. Saul is consenting to the martyr of this first-born of Christianity. Saul, the Pharisee of Pharisees, we, who tithe mint and anise and cummin, and neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy and truth, we stand by while the murderous rocks are being hurled at its head; we share in the robber's spoils - its sacred lands, with all their hidden but real wealth of happiness and prosperity. You and I, my brethren, have too much to do with this dire act. Have you not said, "Party first, liberty afterward"? Have you not cried, "Union, Union, Union, now and forever," carefully omitting the word 'Liberty," which alone makes that Union an honor or a blessing? Have you not filled your ears with the shouts, "Our Nation, however bounded, and however ruled," so that you could not and would not hear the wail of your oppressed fellow-citizens, that heart-broken entreaty from the depths of that vast dungeon, covering a half million

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of square miles

"Am I not a man and a brother? Have you not said, "The slave belongs to his master; how can I interfere?" Have you not acknowledged the right of man to say to his brother, his sister, Thou art my property, to be worked, whipped, starved, sold, ravished, killed, as I will?" Have you not forgotten often in your daily prayers to pray for those in bonds as bound with them? In insolence of heart have you not despised "God's image cut in ebony;" ay, cut in ivory too, if that seems to you the more precious? for the blueeyed, yellow-haired Saxon, no less than his swarthier brother, groans to-day in that prison-house. Have you not joined in jeers and slanders against the abolitionists, and given ground for the remark of a senator from Georgia, Mr. Toombs, but last Thursday, that "the government has but little to fear from the abolitionists. Their greatest achievements have been to raise mobs of fugitives and free negroes, and to incite them to murder and other crimes, and their exploits generally end in subornation of perjury, to escape the criminal courts. The whole concern is not worth an ounce of powder.”

Have you not apologized for, defended, and even applauded the system of slavery, commending the graces of the masters, the submission, contentment, and even happiness of the slave? Have you not cherished a pride of caste, declared complexion a Heaven-appointed barrier of separation between the children of Adam, a great gulf, across which no white and wealthy Dives could pass to mingle in perfect unity of feeling and life with a black or tawny Lazarus, barbarous, beggarly, and sore-smitten, as you saw and said, albeit he was even then lying in Abraham's bosom, the best beloved of all his children? Have you not thus declared the diversity of the human race, and given your sinful aversion the authority of a divine decree?