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nation's life are equivalent to only one year of the life of an individual. The thought is at least consistent with political philosophy, for it is not more true that personal persistence in error leads inevitably to ruin, than it is that every nation exists by obedience to the same moral laws which direct individual life, that they are written in its original constitution, and it must continually reform itself according to the spirit of those laws or perish.

My humble advice, then, fellow citizens, is, that we return and reëstablish the original policy of the nation, and henceforth hold, as we did in the beginning, that slavery is and must be only a purely local, temporary and exceptional institution, confined within the slave states where it already exists, while freedom is the general, normal, enduring and permanent condition of society within the jurisdiction, and under the authority of the constitution of the United States.

counsel thus for a simple reason incapable of illumination. Slavery, however it may be at any time or in any place excused, is at all times and every where unjust and inhuman in its very nature; while freedom, however it may be at any time or in any place neglected, denied or abused, is in its nature right, just and beneficent. It can never, under any circumstances, be wise to persevere, voluntarily, in extending or fortifying an institution that is intrinsically wrong or cruel. It can never be unwise, wherever it is possible, to defend and fortify an existing institution that is founded on the rights of human nature Insomuch as opinions are so materially, and yet so unconsciously, affected and modified by time, place and circumstances, we may hold these great truths firmly, without impeaching the convictions or the motives of those who deny them in argument or in practice.

I counsel thus for another reason quite as simple as the first. Knowledge, emulation and independence among the members of a social state are the chief elements of national wealth, strength and power. Ignorance, indolence and bondage of individuals are always sources of national imbecility and decline. All nations in their turns have practised slavery. Most of them have abolished it. The world over, the wealthiest and most powerful nations have been those which tolerated it least, and which earliest and most completely abolished it. Virginia and Texas are thrown into a panic even now by the appearance or even the suspicion of a handful of men within their

borders instigating civil war. Massachusetts and Vermont defied British invasion backed by treason, eighty years ago.

Thirdly. There is no necessity now to fortify or extend slavery within the United States or on the American continent. All the supposed necessities of that sort ever before known, have passed away forever. Let us briefly review them. With the discovery and conquest of America confessedly came a responsibility to reclaim it. from nature and to introduce civilization. Unfortunately Spain and Portugal, the discoverers and conquerors, were, of all the European states in the sixteenth century, the worst qualified and least able to colonize. They were neither populous, nor industrious, nor free; but were nations of princes and subjects; of soldiers, navigators, nobles, priests, poets and scholars, without merchants, mechanics, farmers or laborers. The art of navigation was imperfect; its practice dangerous, and the new world that the pope had divided between his two most loyal crown-wearing children was in its natural state pestilential. European emigration was therefore impracticable. In the emergency the conquerors, with ruffian violence, swept off at once the gold and silver ornaments which they found in the temples and on the persons of the natives, ignorant of their European values, and subjugated and enslaved the natives themselves. But these simple children of the forest, like the wild flowers when the hurricane sweeps over the prairies, perished under cruelties so contrary to nature.

The African trade, in prisoners of war spared from slaughter, afforded an alternative. The chiefs sold ten men, women or children for a single horse. The conquerors of America brought this unnatural merchandise to our coasts. When the English colonists of North America, happily in only a very limited degree, borrowed from their predecessors this bad practice of slavery, they borrowed also the wretched apology, a want of an adequate supply of free labor. It was then thought an exercise of Christian benevolence to rescue the African heathen from eternal suffering in a future state, and through the painful path of earthly bondage to open to him the gates of the celestial paradise. But all this is now changed. We are at last no feeble or sickly colonies, but a great, populous, homogeneous nation, unsurpassed and unequaled in all the elements of colonization and civilization. Free labor here continually increases and abounds, and is fast verging towards European standards of

value. There is not one acre too much in our broad domain for the supply of even three generations of our free population, with their certain increase. Immigration from Europe is crowding our own sons into the western region, and this movement is daily augmented by the application of new machines for diminishing mechanical and even agricultural labor. At this very moment, congress, after a long and obstinate reluctance, finds itself obliged to yield a homestead law to relieve the pressure of labor in the Atlantic states. Certainly, therefore, we have no need and no room for African slaves in the federal territories. Do you say that we want more sugar and more cotton, and therefore must have more slaves and more slave labor? I answer, first, that no class or race of men have a right to demand sugar, cotton, or any other comfort of human life to be wrung for them, through the action of the federal government, from the unrewarded and compulsory labor of any other class or race of men.

I answer, secondly, that we have sugar and cotton enough already for domestic consumption, and a surplus of the latter for exportation without any increase of slave territory. Do you say that Europe wants more sugar and cotton than we can now supply? I reply, let then Europe send her free laborers hither, or into Italy, or into the West Indies, or into the East; or, if it suit them better, let them engage the natives of cotton-growing regions in the old world, to produce cotton and sugar voluntarily, and for adequate compensation. Such a course, instead of fortifying and enlarging the sway of slavery here, will leave us free to favor its gradual removal. It will renew or introduce civilization on the shores of the Mediterranean and throughout the coasts of the Indian ocean. Christianity, more fully developed and better understood now than heretofore, turns with disgust and horror from the employment of force and piracy as a necessary agent of the gospel.

Fourthly. All the subtle evasions and plausible political theories which have heretofore been brought into the argument for an extension of slavery, have at last been found fallacious and frivolous.

It is unavailing now to say that this government was made by and for white men only, since even slaves owed allegiance to Great ovitain before the revolution, equally with white men, and were tolerlly absolved from it by the revolution, and are not only held to it. Vnce now under our laws, but are also subjected to taxation and appeara presentation in every department of the federal government.

No government can excuse itself from the duty of protecting the extreme rights of every human being, whether foreign or native born, bond or free, whom it compulsorily holds within its jurisdiction. The great fact is now fully realized that the African race here is a foreign and feeble element like the Indians, incapable of assimilation, but not the less, therefore, entitled to such care and protection as the weak everywhere may require from the strong; that it is a pitiful exotic unwisely and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native vineyard. Nor will the argument that the party of slavery is national and that of freedom sectional, any longer avail when it is fully understood that, so far as it is founded in truth, it is only a result of that perversiou of the constitution which has attempted to circumscribe freedom, and to make slavery universal throughout the republic. Equally do the reproaches, invectives and satires of the advocates of slavery extension fail, since it is seen and felt that truth, reason and humanity can work right on without fanaticism, and bear contumely without retaliation. I counsel this course fur ther, because the combinations of slavery are broken up, and can never be renewed with success. Any new combination must be based on the principle of the southern democratic faction, that slavery is inherently just and beneficent, and ought to be protected, which can no longer be tolerated in the north; or else on the principle of the northern democratic faction that slavery is indifferent and unworthy of federal protection, which is insufficient in the south: while the national mind has actually passed far beyond both of these principles, and is settled in the conviction that slavery, wherever and howsoever it exists, exists only to be regretted and deplored.

I counsel this course further, because the necessity for a return to the old national way has become at last absolute and imperative. We can extend slavery into new territories, and create new slave states only by reöpening the African slave trade; a proceeding which, by destroying all the existing values of the slaves now held in the country, and their increase, would bring the north and the south into complete unanimity in favor of that return.

Finally, I counsel that return because a statesman has been designated who possesses, in an eminent and most satisfactory degree, the virtues and the qualifications necessary for the leader in so great and generous a movement; and I feel well assured that Abraham Lin

coln will not fail to reïnaugurate the ancient constitutional policy in the administration of the government successfully, because the republican party, after ample experience, has at last acquired the courage and the constancy necessary to sustain him, and because I am satisfied that the people, at last fully convinced of the wisdom and necessity of the proposed reformation, are prepared to sustain and give it effect.

But when it shall have been accomplished, what may we expect then; what dangers must we incur; what disasters and calamities must we suffer? I answer, no dangers, disasters or calamities. All parties will acquiesce, because it will be the act of the people, in the exercise of their sovereign power, in conformity with the constitution and laws, and in harmony with the eternal principles of justice, and the benignant spirit of the age in which we live. All parties and all sections will alike rejoice in the settlement of a controversy which has agitated the country and disturbed its peace so long. We shall regain the respect and good will of the nations, and once more, consistent with our principles and with our ancient character, we shall, with their free consent, take our place at their head, in their advancing progress, toward a higher and more happy, because more numane and more genial civilization.

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