commerce of western New York, all the commerce of western America must converge, if only the right policy was adopted to concentrate that commerce here. To make this great state and this great nation it required legislation; not any exercise of power or of force, but only proper and wise legislation to direct and invigorate the existing social forces among us. Therefore, nobody at that day proposed to conquer any additional territory, or to subjugate foreign nations for the purpose of increasing the greatness of our own. What did it require? You will see in a moment what it required from what was done. In all the state of New York, then, there were only three hundred thousand inhabitants, and of these, every seventeenth person was an African slave. There were in the United States only four millions of people, and of this sum half a million were African slaves. Everybody could see that a great state could not be built in New York upon the basis of a population consisting of only three hundred thousand souls-a white population. Everybody could see that a great nation could not be created in the United States upon a basis of only four millions of souls, and that at that time the element of increasing force was the increase of African negroes instead of white citizens, as well in the state of New York as in the United States. The reason was an obvious one. The African slave trade was in full force, and it was vigorously exercised for the profits of the white man; and much as men may denounce the assertion of an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery in the same community, it was apparent and manifest then that this importation of African negroes amounted to an exclusion of European freemen. There was a bounty, a bonus upon negroes, and there were expenses, burdens, costs and losses upon white men.

I do not know how it is-it is for these philosophers who deny the irrepressible conflict to-day to tell how it is-that so early as that it was, as it has been to this day, that wherever a state will admit imported African negroes, voluntary emigrants from Ireland, England and Germany will not go. What was to be done? To make this great state, and this great nation, manifestly required to diminish the vigor of the African labor force-to diminish it and arrest it, and on the other hand to stimulate and invigorate the force of free emigration. Does anybody doubt that? It required, secondly, a system of internal improvements to be commensurate with the great

ness of the regions which were thus to be inhabited, and it required that the free labor population should be educated and trained so as to be able to maintain a republican government. This thing required the coöperation of the federal legislature, and of the state legislature. The federal legislature addressed themselves to their work in the convention which framed the constitution, and in the congress which succeeded the constitution. These three federal legislative efforts settled the whole matter in a manner simple and practical. It did not extirpate or attempt to extirpate African slavery. It did not emancipate or attempt to emancipate the African slaves. It did not even arrest at once the African slave trade; but it did encourage all the slave states to remove slavery themselves as soon as they practically could without disturbing the peace and order and the interests of society, of which the states were left the sole judges. The next step that they took was to prohibit the African slave trade, not immediately, but after the expiration of twenty years, and to declare that from and after that time no African slave should ever be introduced into the United States. They took one step now on the side of free labor. They encouraged free labor by federal laws, by inviting the emigrant from Europe, the exiled poor and penniless, no matter whether he were catholic or protestant, or Jew, or Greek, or Gentile—no matter whether he were an Englishman, or a German, or a Pole, or a Hungarian-they invited him to come; and insomuch as the cost of transportation was great and the voyage hazardous, they declared that he might sell his labor which he should perform for years after his arrival to pay the expenses of his transportation to this free land from his native soil. They took one other broad and liberal step, and that was, they declared, by laws of uniform naturalization, that the freeman immigrating into this country, from whatever land, should, after sufficient probation to establish his character and his loyalty, be admitted as a citizen of the republic, and of every state in it, too, whether free state or slave state, on the same footing with the native born. They took one more step, more effective than all the rest, and that is that they shut up the whole of the unoccupied, unsettled, national domain, upon which all the future states were to be erected-they shut it up against slavery and the slave forever. This is what the federal legislative authority did.

Hear, now, what the states did. The prize of commercial greatness and glory was equally sought by the thirteen states. Seven seconded the wise-I had almost said, and will say-the pious policy of the federal government, and abolished slavery from all their borders. Not all at once-not by violence-not by confiscation; but they took such measures in the year 1800 or thereabouts, that whereas, in the year 1800 every twenty-eighth person was a slave, in 1828 not one slave was found upon the soil of the state of New York. Six others of the states followed in the same policy. But six more, -the more southern states-declined to pursue that policy, but they still determined to compete for the great national commercial prize. The state of New York had, in its early days, enlightened statesmen-men who had not learned the demoralizing doctrine of the times, that virtue and freedom enfeebled the state, and that slavery is the necessary element of national greatness. Among the great men and great statesmen and patriots of that early period were Christopher Colles, Hamilton, Jay, the Clintons, Tompkins and Rufus King; and coming later, but not unworthy of the noble association, John W. Francis, of the city of New York. The thoughts of these enlightened men, then called speculation and imagination, filled the age in which they lived, and they projected, and there have since been completed all the great thoroughfares of commerce, from New York bay to the St. Lawrence and the lakes. And other states have continued the work until these same channels of intercourse and commerce between the city of New York and other portions of the continent now reach the very borders of our civilization in the west. One thing more was necessary, and that was education—education for a free people. The foundation of a system of education, equally fair, just and impartial, among all the classes of the citizens, was laid in the state at an early day, and after much attention was finally introduced and established permanently in the city of New York. Here, fellow citizens, I have told you in these very few words the whole foundation of all the prosperity of the state of New York, which now, after a period of only sixty years, counts a population of four millions, and a commerce surpassing all the other states, as well as the foundation of the prosperity of the United States, which now, instead of four millions, counts thirty millions-and which have established in the city of New York, as the one port which alone was adequately adapted to the commerce inland, sur

passing that of any other capital and a foreign commerce second only to one in the world. Surely if, instead of being now before the citizens of this metropolis of this great state of the United States, I had told this story to a stranger in a foreign land, he would have said: "You have told me of that Atlantis-that happy republic which the ancient philosophers conceived, and the ancient poets sung, and which the hard experience of mankind has hitherto proved to be an impossibility and a fabrication.”

And now for the future of New York. I, myself, when I was even older than some beardless hearers before me, sought recreation and rest out of the city of New York by hanging around the open tomb of the Potter's field, and what is now Washington square. I think a very able and ingenious writer in a morning newspaper yesterday called my attention to the fact that, to a certainty established by demonstration, within a period of one hundred and fifty years the population of the United States will be three hundred millions-that it would surpass China. I doubt not his figures are accurate. What, then, is it to be fifty years hence?—for it is a gradual progression. What a hundred years hence-only a hundred yearsis to be the magnitude and the population of the city of New York? Take into view only one agency-two agencies-the combination of the great state of New York and of the United States in increasing their own greatness, and the greatness and glory and magnificence of New York city follow as its legitimate result. This commerce is to be soon not merely a national commerce, but the commerce of the continent of America. I need not tell you that the port which enjoys the commerce of the continent of America, commands at once the commerce of the globe. You have now seen what it is, and you have seen what has produced it. What remains is to consider what is needful to secure that future for the city, as well as for the country for which you as well as myself are necessarily and naturally and justly so ambitious. What can it be, my dear friends? What can it be that is needful to be done but to leave things to go on just exactly as they have gone on hitherto; to leave slavery to be gradually, peaceably circumscribed and limited hereafter, as it has been hitherto, and to leave the increase of our own white population, and the increase by foreign immigration to go on just exactly as they are already going on, and to leave the canals and railroads in full operation as they are, and to leave your systems of education and toleration to

stand on the basis on which they now rest. There, if you please, is what I understand by republicanism. I do not know what complexion it wears to your glasses, but I do know that men may call it black, or green, or red, but to me it is pure, unadulterated republicanism and Americanism.

That is the whole question in this political canvass. There is no more. If you elect that eminent, and able, and honest and reliable man, Abraham Lincoln, to the presidency, and if, as I am sure you will during the course of the next four years, you constitute the United States senate with a majority like him, and at the present election establish the house of representatives on the same basis, you have then done just exactly this: you have elected men who will leave slavery in the United States just exactly where it is now, and who will do more than that-who will leave freedom in the United States, and every foot and every acre of the public domain, which is the basis of future states, just exactly as it is now. There are laws of congress; there are edicts of presidents and governors; there are judgments or pretended judgments of the supreme court, which have a tendency if they should stand, and if they should be continued and renewed by future presidents, and future congresses, and future judges of the supreme court, to change all this thing, to put slavery over into the free states again, and to send slavery into, and freedom out of the territories of the national domain. All that we propose to do, all that you will do, and, God be thanked, all that it is needful to do, is to take care that no more such laws, no more such edicts, no more such judgments or pretended judgments shall be rendered. Why, then, since it is so simple, shall you not go on in the same way which was begun by your fathers, and which has been prosecuted so long and with so much success? They tell us that we are to encounter opposition. Why, bless my soul, did anybody ever expect to reach a fortune, or fame, or happiness on earth, or a crown in Heaven, without encountering resistance and opposition? What are we made men for but to encounter and overcome opposition arrayed against us in the line of our duty. But whence comes this opposition? What is it? I have already alluded to the fact that fifty years ago, when the seven northern states abolished slavery the six southern ones did not see their interest in the same way, and they declined to second or adopt the policy of the day and of the age, and having retained slavery, and the world found out