BOOK III. GREAT SPEECHES ON GREAT ISSUES. (continued 7)

But let me more clearly illustrate the effect of foreign competition in raising prices to the consumer. To do this, I will take my own calling for an example, because I understand that best; though any of you can apply the principle to that with which he may be better acquainted. I am a publisher of newspapers, and suppose I afford them at a cheap rate. But the ability to maintain that cheapness is based on the fact that I can certainly sell a large edition daily, so that no part of that edition shall remain a dead loss on my hands. Now, if there were an active and formidable Foreign competition in newspapers,—if the edition which I printed during the night were frequently rendered unsalable by the arrival of a foreign ship freighted with newspapers early in the morning,—the present rates could not be continued: the price must be increased or the quality would decline. I presume this holds equally good of the production of calicoes, glass, and penknives as of newspapers, though it may be somewhat modified by the nature of the article to which it is applied. That it does hold true of sheetings, nails, and thousands of articles, is abundantly notorious.

I have not burdened you with statistics,—you know they are the reliance, the stronghold, of the cause of Protection, and that we can produce them by acres. My aim has been to exhibit not mere collections of facts, however pertinent and forcible, but the laws on which those facts are based,—not the immediate manifestation, but the ever-living necessity from which it springs. The contemplation of these laws assures 3108me that those articles which are supplied to us by Home Production alone are relatively cheaper than those which are rivalled and competed with from abroad. And I am equally confident that the shutting out of Foreign competition from our markets for other articles of general necessity and liberal consumption which can be made here with as little labor as anywhere would be followed by a corresponding result,—a reduction of the price to the consumer at the same time with increased employment and reward to our Producing Classes.

But, Mr. President, were this only on one side true,—were it certain that the price of the Home product would be permanently higher than that of the Foreign, I should still insist on efficient Protection, and for reasons I have sufficiently shown. Grant that a British cloth costs but $3 per yard, and a corresponding American fabric $4, I still hold that the latter would be decidedly the cheaper for us. The Fuel, Timber, Fruits, Vegetables, &c., which make up so large a share of the cost of the Home product, would be rendered comparatively valueless by having our workshops in Europe. I look not so much to the nominal price as to the comparative facility of payment. And, where cheapness is only to be attained by a depression of the wages of Labor to the neighborhood of the European standard, I prefer that it should be dispensed with. One thing must answer to another; and I hold that the farmers of this country can better afford, as a matter of pecuniary advantage, to pay a good price for manufactured articles than to obtain them lower through the depression and inadequacy of the wages of the artisan and laborer.

You will understand me, then, to be utterly hostile to that idol of Free Trade worship, known as Free or unlimited Competition. The sands of my hour are running low, and I cannot ask time to examine this topic more closely; yet I am confident I could show that this Free Competition is a most delusive and dangerous element of Political Economy. Bear with a brief illustration: At this moment, common shirts are made in London at the incredibly low price of three cents per pair. Should we admit these articles free of duty and buy them because they are so cheap? Free trade says Yes; but I say No! Sound Policy as well as Humanity forbids it. By admitting them, we simply reduce a large and worthy and suffering class of our population from the ability they now possess of procuring a bare subsistence by their labor to unavoidable destitution and pauperism. They must now subsist upon the charity of relatives or of the community,—unless we are ready to adopt the demoniac doctrine of the Free Trade philosopher Malthus, that the dependent Poor ought to be rigorously starved to death. Then what have we gained by getting these articles so exorbitantly cheap? or, rather, what have we not lost? The labor which formerly produced them is mainly struck out of existence; the poor widows and seamstresses among us must still have a subsistence; and the imported garments must be paid for: where are the profits of our speculation?

But even this is not the worst feature of the case. The labor which we have here thrown out of employment by the cheap importation of this article is now ready to be employed again at any price,—if not one that will afford bread and straw, then it must accept one that will produce potatoes and rubbish; and with the product some Free-Trader proceeds to break down the price and destroy the reward of similar labor in some other portion of the earth. And thus each depression of wages produces another, and that a third, and so on, making the circuit of the globe,—the aggravated necessities of the Poor acting and reacting upon each other, increasing the omnipotence of Capital and deepening the dependence of Labor, swelling and pampering a bloated and factitious Commerce, grinding down and grinding down the destitute, until Malthus’s remedy for Poverty shall become a grateful specific, and, amid the splendors and luxuries of an all-devouring Commercial Feudalism, the squalid and famished Millions, its dependants and victims, shall welcome death as a deliverer from their sufferings and despair.

I wish time permitted me to give a hasty glance over the doctrines and teachings of the Free Trade sophists, who esteem themselves the Political Economists, christen their own views liberal and enlightened, and complacently put ours aside as benighted and barbarous. I should delight to show you how they mingle subtle fallacy with obvious truth, how they reason acutely from assumed premises, which, being mistaken or incomplete, lead to false and often absurd conclusions,—how they contradict and confound each other, and often, from Adam Smith, their patriarch, down to McCulloch and Ricardo, either make admissions which undermine their whole fabric, or confess themselves ignorant or in the dark on points the most vital to a correct understanding of the great subject they profess to have reduced to a Science. Yet even Adam Smith himself expressly approves and justifies the British Navigation Act, the most aggressively Protective measure ever enacted,—a measure which, not being understood and seasonably counteracted by other nations, changed for centuries the destinies of the World,—which silently sapped and overthrew the Commercial and Political greatness of Holland,—which silenced the thunder of Van 3109Tromp, and swept the broom from his mast-head. But I must not detain you longer. I do not ask you to judge of this matter by authority, but from facts which come home to your reason and your daily experience. There is not an observing and strong-minded mechanic in our city who could not set any one of these Doctors of the Law right on essential points. I beg you to consider how few great practical Statesmen they have ever been able to win to their standard,—I might almost say none; for Huskisson was but a nominal disciple, and expressly contravened their whole system upon an attempt to apply it to the Corn Laws; and Calhoun is but a Free-Trader by location, and has never yet answered his own powerful arguments in behalf of Protection. On the other hand, we point you to the long array of mighty names which have illustrated the annals of Statesmanship of modern times,—to Chatham, William Pitt, and the Great Frederick of Prussia; to the whole array of memorable French Statesmen, including Napoleon the first of them all; to our own Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison; to our two Clintons, Tompkins, to say nothing of the eagle-eyed and genial-hearted LIVING master-spirit [Henry Clay] of our time. The opinions and the arguments of all these are on record; it is by hearkening to and heeding their counsels that we shall be prepared to walk in the light of experience and look forward to a glorious National destiny. My friends! I dare not detain you longer. I commit to you the cause of the Nation’s Independence, of her Stability and her Prosperity. Guard it wisely and shield it well; for it involves your own happiness and the enduring welfare of your countrymen!

Henry A. Wise

Against Know-Nothingism, Sept. 18, 1852.

The laws of the United States—federal and state laws—declare and defend the liberties of our people. They are free in every sense—free in the sense of Magna Charta and beyond Magna Charta; free by the surpassing franchise of American charters, which makes them sovereign and their wills the sources of constitutions and laws.

In this country, at this time, does any man think anything? Would he think aloud? Would he speak anything? Would he write anything? His mind is free; his person is safe; his property is secure; his house is his castle; the spirit of the laws is his body-guard and his house-guard; the fate of one is the fate of all measured by the same common rule of right; his voice is heard and felt in the general suffrage of freemen; his trial is in open court, confronted by witnesses and accusers; his prison house has no secrets, and he has the judgment of his peers; and there is nought to make him afraid, so long as he respects the rights of his equals in the eye of the law. Would he propagate truth? Truth is free to combat error. Would he propagate error? Error itself may stalk abroad and do her mischief, and make night itself grow darker, provided truth is left free to follow, however slowly, with her torches to light up the wreck! Why, then, should any portion of the people desire to retire in secret, and by secret means to propagate a political thought, or word, or deed, by stealth? Why band together, exclusive of others, to do something which all may not know of, towards some political end? If it be good, why not make the good known? Why not think it, speak it, write it, act it out openly and aloud? Or, is it evil, which loveth darkness rather than light? When there is no necessity to justify a secret association for political ends, what else can justify it? A caucus may sit in secret to consult on the general policy of a great public party. That may be necessary or convenient; but that even is reprehensible, if carried too far. But here is proposed a great primary, national organization, in its inception—What? Nobody knows. To do what? Nobody knows. How organized? Nobody knows. Governed by whom? Nobody knows. How bound? By what rites? By what test oaths? With what limitations and restraints? Nobody, nobody knows! All we know is that persons of foreign birth and of Catholic faith are proscribed; and so are all others who don’t proscribe them at the polls. This is certainly against the spirit of Magna Charta.

A Prussian born subject came to this country. He complied with our naturalization laws in all respects of notice of intention, residence, oath of allegiance, and proof of good moral character. He remained continuously in the United States the full period of five years. When he had fully filled the measure of his probation and was consummately a naturalized citizen of the United States, he then, and not until then, returned to Prussia to visit an aged father. He was immediately, on his return, seized and forced into the Landwehr, or militia system of Prussia, under the maxim: “Once a citizen, always a citizen!” There he is forced to do service to the king of Prussia at this very hour. He applies for protection to the United States. Would the Know-Nothings interpose in his behalf or not? Look at the principles involved. We, by our laws, encouraged him to come to our country, and here he was allowed to become naturalized, and to that end required to renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to the 3110king of Prussia, and to swear allegiance and fidelity to the United States. The king of Prussia now claims no legal forfeiture from him—he punishes him for no crime—he claims of him no legal debt—he claims alone that very allegiance and fidelity which we required the man to abjure and renounce. Not only so, but he hinders the man from returning to the United States, and from discharging the allegiance and fidelity we required him to swear to the United States. The king of Prussia says he should do him service for seven years, for this was what he was born to perform; his obligations were due to him first, and his laws were first binding him. The United States say—true, he was born under your laws, but he had a right to expatriate himself; he owed allegiance first to you, but he had a right to forswear it and to swear allegiance to us; your laws first applied, but this is a case of political obligation, not of legal obligation; it is not for any crime or debt you claim to bind him, but it is for allegiance; and the claim you set up to his services on the ground of his political obligation, his allegiance to you, which we allow him to abjure and renounce, is inconsistent with his political obligation, his allegiance, which we required him to swear to the United States; he has sworn fidelity to us, and we have, by our laws, pledged protection to him.

Such is the issue. Now, with which will the Know-Nothings take sides? With the king of Prussia against our naturalized citizen and against America, or with America and our naturalized citizen? Mark, now, Know-Nothingism is opposed to all foreign influence—against American institutions. The king of Prussia is a pretty potent foreign influence—he was one of the holy alliance of crowned heads. Will they take part with him, and not protect the citizen? Then they will aid a foreign influence against our laws! Will they take sides with our naturalized citizen? If so, then upon what grounds? Now, they must have a good cause of interposition to justify us against all the received dogmas of European despotism.

Don’t they see, can’t they perceive, that they have no other grounds than those I have urged? He is our citizen, nationalized, owing us allegiance and we owing him protection. And if we owe him protection abroad, because of his sworn allegiance to us as a naturalized citizen, what then can deprive him of his privileges at home among us when he returns? If he be a citizen at all, he must be allowed the privileges of citizenship, or he will not be the equal of his fellow-citizens. And must not Know-Nothingism strike at the very equality of citizenship, or allow him to enjoy all its lawful privileges? If Catholics and naturalized citizens are to be citizens and yet to be proscribed from office, they must be rated as an inferior class—an excluded class of citizens. Will it be said that the law will not make this distinction? Then are we to understand that Know-Nothings would not make them equal by law? If not by law, how can they pretend to make them unequal, by their secret order, without law and against law? For them, by secret combination, to make them unequal, to impose a burthen or restriction upon their privileges which the law does not, is to set themselves up above the law, and to supersede by private and secret authority, intangible and irresponsible, the rule of public, political right. Indeed, is this not the very essence of the “Higher Law” doctrine? It cannot be said to be legitimate public sentiment and the action of its authority. Public sentiment, proper, is a concurrence of the common mind in some conclusion, conviction, opinion, taste, or action in respect to persons or things subject to its public notice. It will, and it must control the minds and actions of men, by public and conventional opinion. Count Molé said that in France it was stronger than statutes. It is so here. That it is which should decide at the polls of a republic. But, here is a secret sentiment, which may be so organized as to contradict the public sentiment. Candidate A. may be a native and a Protestant, and may concur with the community, if it be a Know-Nothing community, on every other subject except that of proscribing Catholics and naturalized citizens: and candidate B. may concur with the community on the subject of this proscription alone, and upon no other subject; and yet the Know-Nothings might elect B. by their secret sentiment against the public sentiment. Thus it attacks not only American doctrines of expatriation, allegiance, and protection, but the equality of citizenship, and the authority of public sentiment. In the affair of Koszta, how did our blood rush to his rescue? Did the Know-Nothing side with him and Mr. Marcy, or with Hulseman and Austria? If with Koszta, why? Let them ask themselves for the rationale, and see if it can in reason abide with their orders. There is no middle ground in respect to naturalization. We must either have naturalization laws and let foreigners become citizens, on equal terms of capacities and privileges, or we must exclude them altogether. If we abolish naturalization laws, we return to the European dogma: “Once a citizen, always a citizen.” If we let foreigners be naturalized and don’t extend to them equality of privileges, we set up classes and distinctions of persons wholly opposed to republicanism. We will, as Rome did, have citizens who may be scourged. The three alternatives are presented—Our 3111present policy, liberal, and just, and tolerant, and equal: or the European policy of holding the noses of native born slaves to the grind-stone of tyranny all their lives; or, odious distinctions of citizenship tending to social and political aristocracy. I am for the present laws of naturalization.

As to religion, the Constitution of the United States, art. 6, sec. 3, especially provides that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. The state of Virginia has, from her earliest history, passed the most liberal laws, not only towards naturalization, but towards foreigners. But I have said enough to show the spirit of American laws and the true sense of American maxims.

3d. Know-Nothingism is against the spirit of Reformation and of Protestantism.

What was there to reform?

Let the most bigoted Protestant enumerate what he defines to have been the abominations of the church of Rome. What would he say were the worst? The secrets of Jesuitism, of the Auto da fe, of the Monasteries and of the Nunneries. The private penalties of the Inquisition’s Scavenger’s Daughter. Proscription, persecution, bigotry, intolerance, shutting up of the book of the word. And do Protestants now mean to out-Jesuit the Jesuits? Do they mean to strike and not be seen? To be felt and not to be heard? To put a shudder upon humanity by the masks of mutes? Will they wear the monkish cowls? Will they inflict penalties at the polls without reasoning together with their fellows at the hustings? Will they proscribe? Persecute? Will they bloat up themselves into that bigotry which would burn nonconformists? Will they not tolerate freedom of conscience, but doom dissenters, in secret conclave, to a forfeiture of civil privileges for a religious difference? Will they not translate the scripture of their faith? Will they visit us with dark lanterns and execute us by signs, and test oaths, and in secrecy? Protestantism! forbid it!

If anything was ever open, fair, and free—if anything was ever blatant even—it was the Reformation. To quote from a mighty British pen: “It gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general, but the shock was greatest in this country” (England). It toppled down the full grown intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watchword; but England joined the shout, and echoed it back, with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer and louder strain. With that cry the genius of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There was a mighty fermentation: the waters were out; public opinion was in a state of projection; liberty was held out to all to think and speak the truth; men’s brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts full; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy, loosened tongues, and made the talismans and love tokens of popish superstitions with which she had beguiled her followers and committed abominations with the people, fall harmless from their necks.

The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality, which had then been locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the Prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers to the meanest of the people. It gave them a common interest in a common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. It cemented their Union of character and sentiment; it created endless diversity and collision of opinion. They found objects to employ their faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring intrepidity in maintaining it. Religious controversy sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and braces the will by their infinite importance. We perceive in the history of this period a nervous, masculine intellect. No levity, no feebleness, no indifference; or, if there were, it is a relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone to its general character. But there is a gravity approaching to piety, a seriousness of impression, a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervor of enthusiasm in their method of handling almost every subject. The debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough: but they wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides confined to a few. They did not affect the general mass of the community. But the Bible was thrown open to all ranks and conditions “to own and read,” with its wonderful table of contents, from Genesis to the Revelation. Every village in England would present the scene so well 3112described in Burns’s “Cotter’s Saturday Night.” How unlike this agitation, this shock, this angry sea, this fermentation, this shout and its echoes, this impulse and activity, this concussion, this general effect, this blow, this earthquake, this roar and dashing, this longer and louder strain, this public opinion, this liberty to all to think and speak the truth, this stirring of spirits, this opening of eyes, this zeal to know—not nothing—but the truth, that the truth might make them free. How unlike to this is Know-Nothingism, sitting and brooding in secret to proscribe Catholics and naturalized citizens! Protestantism protested against secrecy, it protested against shutting out the light of truth, it protested against proscription, bigotry, and intolerance. It loosened all tongues, and fought the owls and bats of night with the light of meridian day. The argument of Know-Nothings is the argument of silence. The order ignores all knowledge. And its proscription can’t arrest itself within the limit of excluding Catholics and naturalized citizens. It must proscribe natives and Protestants both, who will not consent to unite in proscribing Catholics and naturalized citizens. Nor is that all; it must not only apply to birth and religion, it must necessarily extend itself to the business of life as well as to political preferments.

Kenneth Raynor, of North Carolina, on Fusion of Fremont and Fillmore Forces.

Extracts from his Speech at Philadelphia, November 1, 1856.

My brother Americans, do you intend to let these mischief-makers put you and me together by the ears? [Many voices; “no, no.”] Then let us beat James Buchanan for the Presidency. [“We will—we will,” and great applause.] He is the representative of slavery agitation; he is the representative of discord between sections; he is the man whom Northern and Southern agitators have agreed to present as their candidate. If he be elected now, and the difficulties in Kansas be healed, at the end of four years they will spring upon you another question of slavery agitation. It will be the taking of Cuba from Spain, or cutting off another slice from Mexico for the purpose of embroiling the North against the South; and then, if I shall resist that agitation, I shall be called an Abolitionist, again.

My countrymen, God forbid that I should attempt to dictate to you or even advise you. I am not competent to do so. I know that divisions exist among you, while I feel also confident that the same purpose animates all your hearts. Do not suppose for one moment that I am the representative of any clique or faction.

Unfortunately, I find that our friends here are in the same condition in which the Jews were, when besieged by the Roman general, Titus. Whilst the battering-rams of the Romans were beating down their walls, and the firebrand of the heathen was consuming their temple, the historian tells us that that great people were engaged in intestine commotions, some advocating the claims of one, and some of another, to the high priesthood of that nation; and instead of the Romans devouring them, they devoured each other. God forbid that my brother Americans should devour each other, at a time when every heart and every hand should be enlisted in the same cause, of overthrowing the common enemy of us all.

Who is that common enemy? [Voices, “The Democratic party.”] Yes, that party have reviled us, abused us, persecuted us, and all only because we are determined to adhere to the Constitution of our country. Give Buchanan a lease of power for four years, and we must toil through persecution, submit to degradation, or cause the streets of our cities to run blood. But we will submit to degradation provided we can see the end of our troubles. We are willing to go through a pilgrimage, not only of four years, but of ten, or twenty, or forty years, provided we can have an assurance that at last we shall reach the top of Pisgah, and see the promised land which our children are to inherit. God has not given to us poor frail mortals the power, at all times, of controlling events. When we cannot control events, should we not, where no sacrifice of honor is involved, pursue the policy of Lysander, and where the lion’s skin is too short, eke it out with the fox’s [applause]—not where principle is involved—not where a surrender of our devotion to our country is at stake. No; never, never!

I know nothing of your straight-out ticket; I know nothing of your Union ticket; I know nothing of Fremont. I do know something of Fillmore; but I would not give my Americanism, and the hopes which I cherish of seeing Americanism installed as the policy of this nation, for all the Fillmores, or Fremonts, or Buchanans, that ever lived on the face of the earth.

St. Paul says, “if it offends my brother, I will eat no meat;” and if it offends my brother here, I will not open my mouth. Nobody can suspect me. [Voices: “certainly not.”] Then I say, can’t you combine the vote of this state, and beat Buchanan? [This question was responded to in the affirmative, with the greatest enthusiasm.] Repeated cheers were proposed for the straight ticket, but the responding voices were by no means numerous, and 3113were mingled with hisses. Such was the universal excitement, that for some minutes the speaker was obliged to pause. He finally raised his voice above the subsiding storm, and said:—

Come, my friends, we are all brothers; we are all seeking the same end. Our object is the same. We are all struggling to reach the same haven of safety. The only difference of opinion is as to the proper means by which to accomplish our common end. Will not Americans learn prudence from the past? Misfortune should have taught us charity for each other. We have passed through the ordeal of persecution together; we have been subjected to the same difficulties, and the same oppression; we have been baptized (I may say) in the same stream of calumny. Then, in the name of God—in the name of our common country—in the name of Americanism—in the name of American nationality—in the name of religious freedom—in the name of the Union, I beseech you to learn charity for the difference of opinion which prevails among you. Let brethren forbear with brethren. Let us recollect that it is not by vituperation, by the censure of our brethren, that we can ever accomplish this great end of conquering a common enemy. My friends, how long are we to suffer? How long will it be before we shall learn that it is only by a union of counsels, a concentration of energy, a combination of purpose, that we can destroy the common enemy of every conservative man. [Great applause.]

I shall not attempt to advise you, for I am not competent to do it. You have information which I do not possess. You know all the undercurrents of opinion which prevail here in your community, with which I am unacquainted; but will you allow an humble man to express his opinion to brethren whom he loves? May I do it? I am a Fillmore man—nothing but a Fillmore man, and if I resided here, I would vote no ticket which had not the name of Millard Fillmore at its head, and I would advise no Fillmore man to vote a ticket with Fremont’s name on it; but I would vote for that ticket which would make my voice tell at the polls.

Now let us look at this thing practically. In reading history I have always admired the character of Oliver Cromwell. What was the great motive by which he was actuated in overthrowing the house of Stuart? It was unfailing devotion to principle. His motto was, “Put your trust in God, and keep your powder dry.” I admire the devotion to principle in every man who says that he does not intend to vote any but the straight ticket, for it shows that Americanism has such a lodgment in his heart, that he cannot bear even seemingly to compromise it. That is “putting your trust in God;” but, my friends, is it “keeping your powder dry?” The enemy may steal into the camp while you are asleep, and may pour water upon your cartridges, so that when the day of battle shall come, you may shoot, but you will kill nobody. I want the vote of every American, on Tuesday next, to tell. Would to God that you could give the twenty-seven electoral votes of Pennsylvania to Fillmore. Then vote the straight ticket, if that will give him the twenty-seven votes. But suppose it will not (and I am afraid it will not), then the question is, had you better give Buchanan the twenty-seven votes, or give Fillmore eight, ten, twelve, or twenty, as the case may be. I go for beating Buchanan.

Gentlemen, you do not know what we Americans suffer at the South. I am abused and reviled for standing up in defence of you. When I hear the whole North denounced as a set of Abolitionists, whose purpose it is to interfere with the peculiar institutions of the South, I brand such charges as slanders on the Northern people. I tell them that the great mass of the Northern people are sound on this question; that they are opposed to slavery, as I should be if I were a Northern man; but that I do not believe that the great mass of the Northern people have any idea of interfering with the constitutional rights of the people of the South. I know that such men as Garrison and Forney have. I know that Garrison believes the Constitution to be a “league with hell,” and would therefore destroy it if he could; and I know that Forney loves office so well, that even at the risk of snapping the Union, he will keep alive slavery agitation. But Garrison does not represent New England, and Forney does not represent you.

As much as I have been reviled for standing by you, I am so anxious to have Buchanan beaten, that were I residing here, if I could not give Fillmore the whole twenty-seven votes, I would give him all I could, by giving him the number to which he might be entitled by the numerical proportion of the votes at the ballot-box. Yet, if there is a brother American here who feels in his “heart of hearts,” that by voting that Union ticket, he would compromise his Americanism, I say to such an one, “do not vote that ticket.” At the same time, candor compels me to say, that I differ in opinion with him. If I believed that that ticket was a fusion, or that it called upon any Fillmore man to vote for Fremont, I would advise no one to vote it. I would not vote a ticket that had on it the name of Fremont; but I would vote a ticket with Fillmore’s name upon it, and which would give him (if not the twenty-seven electoral votes) seven, or ten, or 3114twenty, just as the numerical proportion of the votes might decide.

I appeal to every conservative, Union-loving man in this nation, who is disposed to give to the South all the constitutional privileges to which she is entitled, and who wishes to rebuke the Democratic party for the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and for keeping up the eternal agitation of slavery. I appeal to you as a southern man—as a slaveholder. I do not ask you to be pro-slavery men, to be the advocates of slavery, when I say to you that we, your brethren of the South, expect you to preserve our constitutional rights—and, God knows, we ask nothing more—against fanatics, either north or south. Will you do it?

My friends, the election is fast approaching. There is but little time for deliberation left. Is there no way by which the votes of the anti-Buchanan party can be concentrated on the same ticket? I would shed tears of blood—God knows I would—if I could be instrumental in prevailing on all true Americans to combine. I cannot tell you how to combine; but is it yet too late? If it is too late to do it throughout the state, cannot you in Philadelphia do it? The Presidential election may depend upon the state of Pennsylvania, and the state of Pennsylvania may depend upon the city of Philadelphia. On the vote of the city of Philadelphia may depend not only our own rights, but the rights of our children and our children’s children. I appeal to my brother Americans, for I have no right to appeal to anybody else; I cannot address the Fremont party, for I have no affiliation with them; I cannot address the Buchanan party, for my object is to destroy them if possible. To my American brethren, then, I appeal, for God’s sake, do not let the sun rise upon that wrath, which I see divides you. Your object is the same—to rescue your common country.

Let me advise you who know nothing of your divisions—who belong neither to one clique or the other. I say with the deepest sincerity that I think all parties ought to have concentrated upon the Fillmore ticket. Mr. Fillmore is a northern man. Your southern brethren were willing to support him. He had guided the ship of state safely through the storm, and it was but reasonable to suppose that in time of difficulty he would again be found the same good pilot. But if we cannot get all others to unite on Mr. Fillmore, each of us must inquire, “What is my duty? If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, shall not Mahomet go to the mountain; and if he will not go to the mountain, in heaven’s name, shall he not go half way?”

I am fighting for the victory which we may obtain in this contest. And what an issue is now pending! We read in the Iliad how, for ten long years, a great people of antiquity were engaged in the siege of Troy. What was the stake for which they contended? It was nothing more than a beautiful woman, who had been ravished by a sprig of the royal line of Troy. What is the stake for which we contend? It is constitutional liberty—the right of the American people to govern their own country—the right of every citizen to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. The great issue is, whether the American flag shall still wave in glory when we shall have gone to our graves, or whether it shall be trailed in dishonor—whether the “blackness of darkness” which would follow the dissolution of this Union, shall cover the land.

I do not tell you how to combine: but I urge you to resort to that mode (if there is such a mode possible), by which you can get together—by which your votes can be made effectual at the polls—by which Millard Fillmore can go before the House of Representatives with the strong moral power which a large electoral vote will give him.

That is the way in which we must view the question as practical men. Yet so different are the conditions of our nature, so different the sentiments which actuate us, that I will not be guilty of such presumption, as to tell any man what particular course he should take. You know my opinions; if they are worth anything, receive them into your hearts, simply as the sentiments of a brother American; if they are worth nothing, let them pass as the idle wind.

In conclusion I will only say that whether we be defeated or whether we be victorious, the only reward I ask for in the labor in which I am engaged is, that you may recollect me as one who had at heart only the welfare of his country, and who endeavored to promote it by appealing to the associations of the past, and all the hopes of the future.

Religious Test.

Debate in the Convention on that article in the Constitution in regard to it.

Mr. Pinkney moved that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Mr. Sherman thought it unnecessary, the prevailing liberality being a sufficient security against all such tests.

Rev. Mr. Backus of Mass. I beg leave to offer a few thoughts upon the Constitution proposed to us; and I shall begin with the exclusion of any religious test. Many appear to be much concerned about 3115it; but nothing is more evident, both in reason and the Holy Scriptures, than that religion is ever a matter between God and individuals; and that, therefore, no man or set of men can impose any religious test without invading the essential prerogatives of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ministers first assumed this power under the Christian name, and then Constantine approved of the practice when he adopted the profession of Christianity as an engine of state policy. And let the history of all nations be searched, from that day to this, and it will appear that the imposing of religious tests hath been the greatest engine of tyranny in the world.

Oliver Wolcott of Conn. For myself I should be content either with or without that clause in the Constitution which excludes test laws. Knowledge and liberty are so prevalent in this country, that I do not believe that the United States would ever be disposed to establish one religious sect and lay all others under legal disabilities. But as we know not what may take place hereafter, and any such test would be destructive of the rights of free citizens, I cannot think it superfluous to have added a clause which secures us from the possibility of such oppression.

Mr. Madison of Va. I confess to you, sir, that were uniformity of religion to be introduced by this system, it would, in my opinion, be ineligible; but I have no reason to conclude that uniformity of government will produce that of religion. This subject is, for the honor of America, left perfectly free and unshackled. The government has no jurisdiction over it—the least reflection will convince us there is no danger on this ground. Happily for the states, they enjoy the utmost freedom of religion. This freedom arises from that multiplicity of sects which pervades America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For, where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.

Mr. Iredell of N. C. used this language: “Every person in the least conversant with the history of mankind, knows what dreadful mischiefs have been committed by religious persecution. Under the color of religious tests, the utmost cruelties have been exercised. Those in power have generally considered all wisdom centred in themselves, that they alone had the right to dictate to the rest of mankind, and that all opposition to their tenets was profane and impious. The consequence of this intolerant spirit has been that each church has in turn set itself up against every other, and persecutions and wars of the most implacable and bloody nature have taken place in every part of the world. America has set an example to mankind to think more rationally—that a man may be of religious sentiments differing from our own, without being a bad member of society. The principles of toleration, to the honor of this age, are doing away those errors and prejudices which have so long prevailed even in the most intolerant countries. In Roman Catholic lands, principles of moderation are adopted, which would have been spurned a century or two ago. It will be fatal, indeed, to find, at the time when examples of toleration are set even by arbitrary governments, that this country, so impressed with the highest sense of liberty, should adopt principles on this subject that were narrow, despotic, and illiberal.”

Speech of Henry W. Davis, of Maryland,

On the Mission of the American Party.

Extract from Mr. Davis’s speech in the House of Representatives, on the 6th of Jan., 1857, on the results of the recent Presidential election:—

“The great lesson is taught by this election that both the parties which rested their hopes on sectional hostility, stand at this day condemned by the great majority of the country, as common disturbers of the public peace of the country.

“The Republican party was a hasty levy, en masse, of the Northern people to repel or revenge an intrusion by Northern votes alone. With its occasion it must pass away. The gentlemen of the Republican side of the House can now do nothing. They can pass no law excluding slavery from Kansas in the next Congress—for they are in a minority. Within two years Kansas must be a state of the Union. She will be admitted with or without slavery, as her people prefer. Beyond Kansas there is no question that is practically open. I speak to practical men. Slavery does not exist in any other territory,—it is excluded by law from several, and not likely to exist anywhere; and the Republican party has nothing to do and can do nothing. It has no future. Why cumbers it the ground?

“Between these two stand the firm ranks of the American party, thinned by desertions, but still unshaken. To them the eye of the country turns in hope. The gentleman from Georgia saluted the Northern Democrats with the title of heroes—who swam vigorously down the current. The men of the American party faced, in each section, the sectional madness. They would cry neither free nor slave Kansas; but proposed a safe administration of the laws, before which every right would find protection. Their voice was drowned amid the din of factions. The 3116men of the North would have no moderation, and they have paid the penalty. The American party elected a majority of this House: had they of the North held fast to the great American principle of silence on the negro question, and, firmly refusing to join either agitation, stood by the American candidate, they would not now be writhing, crushed beneath an utter overthrow. If they would now destroy the Democrats, they can do it only by returning to the American party. By it alone can a party be created strong at the South as well as at the North. To it alone belongs a principle accepted wherever the American name is heard—the same at the North as at the South, on the Atlantic or the Pacific shore. It alone is free from sectional affiliations at either end of the Union which would cripple it at the other. Its principle is silence, peace, and compromise. It abides by the existing law. It allows no agitation. It maintains the present condition of affairs. It asks no change in any territory, and it will countenance no agitation for the aggrandizement of either section. Though thousands fell off in the day of trial—allured by ambition, or terrified by fear—at the North and at the South, carried away by the torrent of fanaticism in one part of the Union, or driven by the fierce onset of the Democrats in another, who shook Southern institutions by the violence of their attack, and half waked the sleeping negro by painting the Republican as his liberator, still a million of men, on the great day, in the face of both factions, heroically refused to bow the knee to either Baal. They knew the necessities of the times, and they set the example of sacrifice, that others might profit by it. They now stand the hope of the nation, around whose firm ranks the shattered elements of the great majority may rally and vindicate the right of the majority to rule, and of the native of the land to make the law of the land.

The recent election has developed, in an aggravated form, every evil against which the American party protested. Again in the war of domestic parties, Republican and Democrat have rivalled each other in bidding for the foreign vote to turn the balance of a domestic election. Foreign allies have decided the government of the country—men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the election—eagerly struggled for by competing parties, mad with sectional fury, and grasping any instrument which would prostrate their opponents. Again, in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious influence on the political arena. These influences have brought vast multitudes of foreign born citizens to the polls, ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished the present result.

The high mission of the American is to restore the influence of the interests of the people in the conduct of affairs; to exclude appeals to foreign birth or religious feeling as elements of power in politics; to silence the voice of sectional strife—not by joining either section, but by recalling the people from a profitless and maddening controversy which aids no interest, and shakes the foundation not only of the common industry of the people, but of the Republic itself; to lay a storm amid whose fury no voice can be heard in behalf of the industrial interests of the country, no eye can watch and guard the foreign policy of the government, till our ears may be opened by the crash of foreign war waged for purposes of political and party ambition, in the name, but not by the authority nor for the interests, of the American people.

Return, then, Americans of the North, from the paths of error to which in an evil hour fierce passions and indignation have seduced you, to the sound position of the American party—silence on the slavery agitation. Leave the territories as they are—to the operation of natural causes. Prevent aggression by excluding from power the aggressors, and there will be no more wrong to redress. Awake the national spirit to the danger and degradation of having the balance of power held by foreigners. Recall the warnings of Washington against foreign influence—here in our midst—wielding part of our sovereignty; and with these sound words of wisdom let us recall the people from paths of strife and error to guard their peace and power; and when once the mind of the people is turned from the slavery agitation, that party which waked the agitation will cease to have power to disturb the peace of the land.

This is the great mission of the American party. The first condition of success is to prevent the administration from having a majority in the next Congress; for, with that, the agitation will be resumed for very different objects. The Ostend manifesto is full of warning; and they who struggle over Kansas may awake and find themselves in the midst of an agitation compared to which that of Kansas was a summer’s sea; whose instruments will be, not words, but the sword.

Joshua R. Giddings Against the Fugitive Slave Law.

In the House of Representatives, April 25, 1848.

“Why, sir, I never saw a panting fugitive speeding his way to a land of freedom, 3117that an involuntary invocation did not burst from my lips, that God would aid him in his flight! Such are the feelings of every man in our free states, whose heart has not become hardened in iniquity. I do not confine this virtue to Republicans, nor to Anti-Slavery men; I speak of all men, of all parties, in all Christian communities. Northern Democrats feel it; they ordinarily bow to this higher law of their natures, and they only prove recreant to the law of the ‘Most High,’ when they regard the interests of the Democratic party as superior to God’s law and the rights of mankind.

“Gentlemen will bear with me when I assure them and the President that I have seen as many as nine fugitives dining at one time in my own house—fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, parents, and children. When they came to my door, hungry and faint, cold and but partially clad, I did not turn round to consult the Fugitive Law, nor to ask the President what I should do. I knew the constitution of my country, and would not violate it. I obeyed the divine mandate, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. I fed them. I clothed them, gave them money for their journey, and sent them on their way rejoicing. I obeyed God rather than the President. I obeyed my conscience, the dictates of my heart, the law of my moral being, the commands of Heaven, and, I will add, the constitution of my country; for no man of intelligence ever believed that the framers of that instrument intended to involve their descendants of the free states in any act that should violate the teachings of the Most High, by seizing a fellow-being, and returning him to the hell of slavery. If that be treason, make the most of it.

“Mr. Bennett, of Mississippi. I want to know if the gentleman would not have gone one step farther?

“Mr. Giddings. Yes, sir; I would have gone one step farther. I would have driven the slave-catcher who dared pursue them from my premises. I would have kicked him from my door-yard, if he had made his appearance there; or, had he attempted to enter my dwelling, I would have stricken him down upon the threshold of my door.

Robert Toombs on Slavery,

At Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24th, 1856.

In 1790 there were less than seven hundred thousand slaves in the United States; in 1850 the number exceeded three and one quarter millions. The same authority shows their increase, for the ten years preceding the last census, to have been above twenty-eight per cent., or nearly three per cent. per annum, an increase equal, allowing for the element of foreign immigration, to the white race, and nearly three times that of the free blacks of the North. But these legal rights of the slave embrace but a small portion of the privileges actually enjoyed by him. He has, by universal custom, the control of much of his own time, which is applied, at his own choice and convenience, to the mechanic arts, to agriculture, or to some other profitable pursuit, which not only gives him the power of purchase over many additional necessaries of life, but over many of its luxuries, and in numerous cases, enables him to purchase his freedom when he desires it. Besides, the nature of the relation of master and slave begets kindnesses, imposes duties (and secures their performance), which exist in no other relation of capital and labor. Interest and humanity co-operate in harmony for the well-being of slave labor. Thus the monster objection to our institution of slavery, that it deprives labor of its wages, cannot stand the test of a truthful investigation. A slight examination of the true theory of wages, will further expose its fallacy. Under a system of free labor, wages are usually paid in money, the representative of products—under ours, in products themselves. One of your most distinguished statesmen and patriots, President John Adams, said that the difference to the state was “imaginary.” “What matters it (said he) whether a landlord, employing ten laborers on his farm, gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand?” All experience has shown that if that be the measure of the wages of labor, it is safer for the laborer to take his wages in products than in their fluctuating pecuniary value. Therefore, if we pay in the necessaries and comforts of life more than any given amount of pecuniary wages will buy, then our laborer is paid higher than the laborer who receives that amount of wages. The most authentic agricultural statistics of England show that the wages of agricultural and unskilled labor in that kingdom, not only fail to furnish the laborer with the comforts of our slave, but even with the necessaries of life; and no slaveholder could escape a conviction for cruelty to his slaves who gave his slave no more of the necessaries of life for his labor than the wages paid to their agricultural laborers by the noblemen and gentlemen of England would buy. Under their system man has become less valuable and less cared for than domestic animals; and noble dukes will depopulate whole districts of men to supply their places with sheep, and then with intrepid audacity lecture and denounce American slaveholders.

The great conflict between labor and 3118capital, under free competition, has ever been how the earnings of labor shall be divided between them. In new and sparsely settled countries, where land is cheap, and food is easily produced, and education and intelligence approximate equality, labor can successfully struggle in this warfare with capital. But this is an exceptional and temporary condition of society. In the Old World this state of things has long since passed away, and the conflict with the lower grades of labor has long since ceased. There the compensation of unskilled labor, which first succumbs to capital, is reduced to a point scarcely adequate to the continuance of the race. The rate of increase is scarcely one per cent. per annum, and even at that rate, population, until recently, was considered a curse; in short, capital has become the master of labor, with all the benefits, without the natural burdens of the relation.

In this division of the earnings of labor between it and capital, the southern slave has a marked advantage over the English laborer, and is often equal to the free laborer of the North. Here again we are furnished with authentic data from which to reason. The census of 1850 shows that, on the cotton estates of the South, which is the chief branch of our agricultural industry, one-half of the arable lands are annually put under food crops. This half is usually wholly consumed on the farm by the laborers and necessary animals; out of the other half must be paid all the necessary expenses of production, often including additional supplies of food beyond the produce of the land, which usually equals one-third of the residue, leaving but one-third for net rent. The average rent of land in the older non-slaveholding states is equal to one-third of the gross product, and it not unfrequently amounts to one-half of it (in England it is sometimes even greater), the tenant, from his portion, paying all expenses of production and the expenses of himself and family. From this statement it is apparent that the farm laborers of the South receive always as much, and frequently a greater portion of the produce of the land, than the laborer in the New or Old England. Besides, here the portion due the slave is a charge upon the whole product of capital and the capital itself; it is neither dependent upon seasons nor subject to accidents, and survives his own capacity for labor, and even the ruin of his master.

But it is objected that religious instruction is denied the slave—while it is true that religious instruction and privileges are not enjoined by law in all of the states, the number of slaves who are in connection with the different churches abundantly proves the universality of their enjoyment of those privileges. And a much larger number of the race in slavery enjoy the consolations of religion than the efforts of the combined Christian world have been able to convert to Christianity out of all the millions of their countrymen who remained in their native land.

The immoralities of the slaves, and of those connected with slavery, are constant themes of abolition denunciation. They are lamentably great; but it remains to be shown that they are greater than with the laboring poor of England, or any other country. And it is shown that our slaves are without the additional stimulant of want to drive them to crime—we have at least removed from them the temptation and excuse of hunger. Poor human nature is here at least spared the wretched fate of the utter prostration of its moral nature at the feet of its physical wants. Lord Ashley’s report to the British Parliament shows that in the capital of that empire, perhaps within the hearing of Stafford House and Exeter Hall, hunger alone daily drives its thousands of men and women into the abyss of crime.

It is also objected that our slaves are debarred the benefits of education. This objection is also well taken, and is not without force. And for this evil the slaves are greatly indebted to the abolitionists. Formerly in none of the slaveholding states was it forbidden to teach slaves to read and write; but the character of the literature sought to be furnished them by the abolitionists caused these states to take counsel rather of their passions than their reason, and to lay the axe at the root of the evil; better counsels will in time prevail, and this will be remedied. It is true that the slave, from his protected position, has less need of education than the free laborer, who has to struggle for himself in the warfare of society; yet it is both useful to him, his master, and society.

The want of legal protection to the marriage relation is also a fruitful source of agitation among the opponents of slavery. The complaint is not without foundation. This is an evil not yet removed by law; but marriage is not inconsistent with the institution of slavery as it exists among us, and the objection, therefore, lies rather to an incident than to the essence of the system. But in the truth and fact marriage does exist to a very great extent among slaves, and is encouraged and protected by their owners; and it will be found, upon careful investigation, that fewer children are born out of wedlock among slaves than in the capitals of two of the most civilized countries of Europe—Austria and France; in the former, one-half of the children are thus born; in the latter, more than one-fourth. But even in this we have deprived the slave of no pre-existing right. We found the race 3119without any knowledge of or regard for the institution of marriage, and we are reproached with not having as yet secured to it that, with all other blessings of civilization. To protect that and other domestic ties by laws forbidding, under proper regulations, the separation of families, would be wise, proper, and humane; and some of the slaveholding states have already adopted partial legislation for the removal of these evils. But the objection is far more formidable in theory than in practice. The accidents and necessities of life, the desire to better one’s condition, produce infinitely a greater amount of separation in families of the white than ever happens to the colored race. This is true even in the United States, where the general condition of the people is prosperous. But it is still more marked in Europe. The injustice and despotism of England towards Ireland has produced more separation of Irish families, and sundered more domestic ties within the last ten years, than African slavery has effected since its introduction into the United States. The twenty millions of freemen in the United States are witnesses of the dispersive injustice of the Old World. The general happiness, cheerfulness, and contentment of slaves attest both the mildness and humanity of the system and their natural adaptation to their condition. They require no standing armies to enforce their obedience; while the evidence of discontent, and the appliances of force to repress it, are everywhere visible among the toiling millions of the earth; even in the northern states of this Union, strikes and mobs, unions and combinations against employers, attest at once the misery and discontent of labor among them. England keeps one hundred thousand soldiers in time of peace, a large navy, and an innumerable police, to secure obedience to her social institutions; and physical force is the sole guarantee of her social order, the only cement of her gigantic empire.

I have briefly traced the condition of the African race through all ages and all countries, and described it fairly and truly under American slavery, and I submit that the proposition is fully proven, that his position in slavery among us is superior to any which he has ever attained in any age or country. The picture is not without shade as well as light; evils and imperfections cling to man and all of his works, and this is not exempt from them.

Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana,

On Slave Property, in U. S. Senate, March 11, 1858.

Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species of property there recognized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the inventive genius of our brethren of the north is a source of vast wealth to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one of the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents now before us in this Capitol for renewal was $40,000,000. I cannot believe that the entire capital invested in inventions of this character in the United States can fall short of one hundred and fifty or two hundred million dollars. On what protection does this vast property rest? Just upon that same constitutional protection which gives a remedy to the slave owner when his property is also found outside of the limits of the state in which he lives.

Without this protection what would be the condition of the northern inventor? Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law would come to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had stolen his property, “render me up my property, or pay me value for its use.” The Senator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he were the counsel of this Vermont inventor, “Sir, if you want protection for your property go to your own state; property is governed by the laws of the state within whose jurisdiction it is found; you have no property in your invention outside of the limits of your state; you cannot go an inch beyond it.” Would not this be so? Does not every man see at once that the right of the inventor to his discovery, that the right of the poet to his inspiration, depends upon those principles of eternal justice which God has implanted in the heart of man, and that wherever he cannot exercise them, it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received from God, denies them the protection to which they are entitled?

Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senator from Vermont himself has given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a horse riding him across the line into Pennsylvania. The Senator says: “Now, you see that slaves are not property like other property; if slaves were property like other property, why have you this special clause in your constitution to protect a slave? You have no clause to protect the horse, because horses are recognized as property everywhere.” Mr. President, the same fallacy lurks at the bottom of this argument, as of all the rest. Let Pennsylvania exercise her undoubted jurisdiction over persons and things within her own boundary; let her do as she has a perfect right to do—declare that hereafter, within the state of Pennsylvania, there shall be no property in horses, and that no man shall maintain a suit in her courts for the recovery of property in a horse; and where will your horse owner be then? Just 3120where the English poet is now; just where the slaveholder and the inventor would be if the Constitution, foreseeing a difference of opinion in relation to rights in these subject-matters, had not provided the remedy in relation to such property as might easily be plundered. Slaves, if you please, are not property like other property in this: that you can easily rob us of them; but as to the right in them, that man has to overthrow the whole history of the world, he has to overthrow every treatise on jurisprudence, he has to ignore the common sentiment of mankind, he has to repudiate the authority of all that is considered sacred with man, ere he can reach the conclusion that the person who owns a slave, in a country where slavery has been established for ages, has no other property in that slave than the mere title which is given by the statute law of the land where it is found.

William Lloyd Garrison Upon the Slavery Question.

“Tyrants! confident of its overthrow, proclaim not to your vassals, that the American Union is an experiment of freedom, which, if it fails, will forever demonstrate the necessity of whips for the backs, and chains for limbs of people. Know that its subversion is essential to the triumph of justice, the deliverance of the oppressed, the vindication of the brotherhood of the race. It was conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity; and its career has been marked by unparalleled hypocrisy, by high-handed tyranny, by a bold defiance of the omniscience and omnipotence of God. Freedom indignantly disowns it, and calls for its extinction; for within its borders are three millions of slaves, whose blood constitutes its cement, whose flesh forms a large and flourishing branch of its commerce, and who are ranked with four-footed beasts and creeping things. To secure the adoption of the constitution of the United States, first, that the African slave trade—till that time a feeble, isolated, colonial traffic—should, for at least twenty years, be prosecuted as a national interest, under the American flag, and protected by the national arm; secondly, that slavery holding oligarchy, created by allowing three-fifths of the slaveholding population to be represented by their taskmasters, should be allowed a permanent seat in congress; thirdly, that the slave system should be secured against internal revolt and external invasion, by the united physical force of the country; fourthly, that not a foot of national territory should be granted, on which the panting fugitive from slavery might stand, and be safe from his pursuers, thus making every citizen a slave-hunter and slave catcher. To say that this ‘covenant with death’ shall not be annulled—that this ‘agreement with hell’ shall continue to stand—that this refuge of lies shall not be swept away—is to hurl defiance at the eternal throne, and to give the lie to Him that sits thereon. It is an attempt, alike monstrous and impracticable, to blend the light of heaven with the darkness of the bottomless pit, to unite the living with the dead, to associate the Son of God with the Prince of Evil. Accursed be the American Union, as a stupendous, republican imposture!”

“I am accused of using hard language. I admit the charge. I have been unable to find a soft word to describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it. The man who makes a chattel of his brother—what is he? The man who keeps back the hire of his laborers by fraud—what is he? They who prohibit the circulation of the Bible—what are they? They who compel three millions of men and women to herd together like brute beasts—what are they? They who sell mothers by the pound, and children in lots to suit purchasers—what are they? I care not what terms are applied to them, provided they do apply. If they are not thieves, if they are not tyrants, if they are not men stealers, I should like to know what is their true character, and by what names they may be called. It is as mild an epithet to say that a thief is a thief, as to say that a spade is a spade. Words are but the signs of ideas. ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Language may be misapplied, and so be absurd or unjust; as for example, to say that an abolitionist is a fanatic, or that a slaveholder is an honest man. But to call things by their right names is to use neither hard nor improper language. Epithets may be rightly applied, it is true, and yet be uttered in a hard spirit, or with a malicious design. What then? Shall we discard all terms which are descriptive of crime, because they are not always used with fairness and propriety? He who, when he sees oppression, cries out against it—who, when he beholds his equal brother trodden under foot by the iron hoof of despotism, rushes to his rescue—who, when he sees the weak overborne by the strong, takes his side with the former, at the imminent peril of his own safety—such a man needs no certificate to the excellence of his temper, or the sincerity of his heart, or the disinterestedness of his conduct. Or is the apologist of slavery, he who can see the victim of thieves lying bleeding and helpless on the cold earth, and yet turn aside, like the callous-hearted priest or Levite, who needs absolution. Let us call tyrants, 3121tyrants; not to do so is to misuse language, to deal treacherously with freedom, to consent to the enslavement of mankind. It is neither amiable nor virtuous, but a foolish and pernicious thing, not to call things by their right names. ‘Woe unto them,’ says one of the world’s great prophets, ‘that call evil good, and good evil;’ that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”

Theodore Parker Against the Fugitive Slave Law.

His Protest Against the Return of Simms by the U. S. Commissioner at Boston.

“Come with me, my friends, a moment more, pass over this golgotha of human history, treading reverent as you go, for our feet are on our mother’s graves, and our shoes defile our father’s hallowed bones. Let us not talk of them; go farther on, look and pass by. Come with me into the inferno of the nations, with such poor guidance as my lamp can lend. Let us disquiet and bring up the awful shadows of empires buried long ago, and learn a lesson from the tomb.” “Come, old Assyria, with the Ninevitish dove upon thy emerald crown! what laid thee low? ‘I fell by my own injustice. Thereby Nineveh and Babylon came with me also to the ground.’” “Oh, queenly Persia, flame of the nations, wherefore art thou so fallen, who troddest the people under thee, bridgest the Hellespont with ships, and pouredst thy temple-wasting millions on the world? Because I trod the people under me, and bridged the Hellespont with ships, and poured my temple-wasting millions on the western world, I fell by my own misdeeds.” “Thou muse-like Grecian queen, fairest of all thy classic sisterhood of states, enchanting yet the world with thy sweet witchery, speaking in art and most seductive song, why liest thou there, with beauteous yet dishonored brow, reposing on thy broken harp? ‘I scorned the law of God; banished and poisoned wisest, justest men; I loved the loveliness of thought, and treasured that in more than Parian speech. But the beauty of justice, the loveliness of love, I trod them down to earth! Lo, therefore have I become as those barbarian states—as one of them!’” “Oh, manly and majestic Rome, thy seven-fold mural crown all broken at thy feet, why art thou here? It was not injustice brought thee low; for thy great book of law is prefaced with these words—justice is the unchanged, everlasting will to give each man his right! ‘It was not the saint’s ideal; it was the hypocrite’s pretense.’ I made iniquity my law. I trod the nations under me. Their wealth gilded my palaces—where thou mayest see the fox and hear the owl—it fed my courtiers and my courtesans. Wicked men were my cabinet counselors, the flatterer breathed his poison in my ear. Millions of bondsmen wet the soil with tears and blood. Do you not hear it crying yet to God? Lo, here have I my recompense, tormented with such downfall as you see! Go back and tell the new-born child who sitteth on the Alleghanies, laying his either hand upon a tributary sea, a crown of thirty stars upon his youthful brow—tell him that there are rights which states must keep, or they shall suffer wrongs! Tell him there is a God who keeps the black man and the white, and hurls to earth the loftiest realm that breaks his just, eternal law! Warn the young empire, that he come not down dim and dishonored to my shameful tomb! Tell him that justice is the unchanging, everlasting will to give each man his right. I knew it, broke it, and am lost. Bid him know it, keep it, and be safe.”

The same speaker protests against the return of Simms.

“Where shall I find a parallel with men who will do such a deed—do it in Boston? I will open the tombs and bring up most hideous tyrants from the dead. Come, brood of monsters, let me bring up from the deep damnation of the graves wherein your hated memories continue for all time their never-ending rot. Come, birds of evil omen! come, ravens, vultures, carrion crows, and see the spectacle! come, see the meeting of congenial souls! I will disturb, disquiet, and bring up the greatest monsters of the human race! Tremble not, women! They cannot harm you now! Fear the living, not the dead!”

Come hither, Herod, the wicked. Thou that didst seek after that young child’s life, and destroyed the innocents! Let me look on thy face! No, go! Thou wert a heathen! Go, lie with the innocents thou hast massacred. Thou art too good for this company! “Come, Nero; thou awful Roman emperor, come up! No, thou wast drunk with power! schooled in Roman depravity. Thou hadst, besides, the example of thy fancied gods. Go, wait another day. I will seek a worse man.

“Come hither, St. Dominic! come, Torquemada; fathers of the Inquisition! merciless monsters, seek your equal here. No; pass by. You are no companion for such men as these. You were the servants of the atheistic popes, of cruel kings. Go to, and get you gone. Another time I may have work for you—now, lie there, and persevere to rot. You are not yet quite wicked and corrupt enough for this comparison. Go, get you gone, lest the sun goes back at sight of ye!

“Come up, thou heap of wickedness, George Jeffries! thy hands deep purple with the blood of thy fellow-men. Ah! I 3122know thee, awful and accursed shade! Two hundred years after thy death men hate thee still, not without cause. Look me upon thee! I know thy history. Pause, and be still, while I tell to these men. * * * Come, shade of judicial butcher. Two hundred years, thy name has been pillowed in face of the world, and thy memory gibbeted before mankind. Let us see how thou wilt compare with those who kidnap men in Boston. Go, seek companionship with them. Go, claim thy kindred if such they be. Go, tell them that the memory of the wicked shall rot; that there is a God; an eternity; ay, and a judgment, too, where the slave may appeal against him that made him a slave, to Him that made him a man.

“What! Dost thou shudder? Thou turn back! These not thy kindred! Why dost thou turn pale, as when the crowd clutched at thy life in London street? Forgive me, that I should send thee on such an errand, or bid thee seek companionship with such—with Boston hunters of the slave! Thou wert not base enough! It was a great bribe that tempted thee! Again, I say, pardon me for sending thee to keep company with such men! Thou only struckest at men accused of crime; not at men accused only of their birth! Thou wouldst not send a man into bondage for two pounds! I will not rank thee with men who, in Boston, for ten dollars, would enslave a negro now! Rest still, Herod! Be quiet, Nero! Sleep, St. Dominic, and sleep, O Torquemada, in your fiery jail! Sleep, Jeffries, underneath ‘the altar of the church’ which seeks, with Christian charity to hide your hated bones!”

William H. Seward’s Speech on the Higher Law.

In the U. S. Senate, March 11, 1850.

“But it is insisted that the admission of California shall be attended by a COMPROMISE of questions which have arisen out of SLAVERY! I am opposed to any such compromise in any and all the forms in which it has been proposed. Because, while admitting the purity and the patriotism of all from whom it is my misfortune to differ, I think all legislative compromises radically wrong, and essentially vicious. They involve the surrender of the exercise of judgment and the conscience on distinct and separate questions, at distinct and separate times, with the indispensable advantages it affords for ascertaining the truth. They involve a relinquishment of the right to reconsider in future the decision of the present, on questions prematurely anticipated. And they are a usurpation as to future questions of the providence of future legislators.

“Sir, it seems to me as if slavery had laid its paralyzing hand upon myself, and the blood were coursing less freely than its wont through my veins, when I endeavor to suppose that such a compromise has been effected, and my utterance forever is arrested upon all the great questions, social, moral, and political, arising out of a subject so important, and yet so incomprehensible. What am I to receive in this compromise? Freedom in California. It is well; it is a noble acquisition; it is worth a sacrifice. But what am I to give as an equivalent? A recognition of a claim to perpetuate slavery in the District of Columbia; forbearance towards more stringent laws concerning the arrest of persons suspected of being slaves found in the free States; forbearance from the PROVISO of freedom in the charter of new territories. None of the plans of compromise offered demand less than two, and most of them insist on all these conditions. The equivalent then is, some portion of liberty, some portion of human rights in one region for liberty in another.”

“It is true indeed that the national domain is ours. It is true it was acquired by the valor and the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no arbitrary power over anything, whether acquired by law or seized by usurpation. The constitution regulates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to welfare and to liberty. But there is a higher law than the constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purpose. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust, as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness. This is a State, and we are deliberating for it, just as our fathers deliberated in establishing the institutions we enjoy. Whatever superiority there is in our condition and hopes over those of any other ‘kingdom’ or ‘estate,’ is due to the fortunate circumstance that our ancestors did not leave things to ‘take their chances’ but that they ‘added amplitude and greatness’ to our commonwealth ‘by introducing such ordinances, constitutions, and customs as were wise.’ We in our turn have succeeded to the same responsibilities, and we cannot approach the duty before us wisely or justly, except we raise ourselves to the great consideration of how we can most certainly ‘sow greatness to our posterity and successors.’

“And now the simple, bold, and awful question which presents itself to us is this: shall we, who are founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions; 3123shall we, who know by experience the wise and just, and are free to choose them, and to reject the erroneous and unjust; shall we establish human bondage, or permit it by our sufferance to be established? Sir, our forefathers would not have hesitated an hour. They found slavery existing here, and they left it only because they could not remove it. There is not only no free State which would now establish it, but there is no slave State which, if it had had the free alternative, as we now have, would have founded slavery. Indeed, our revolutionary predecessors had precisely the same question before them in establishing an organic law, under which the States of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa have since come into the Union, and they solemnly repudiated and excluded slavery from those States forever.”

Charles Sumner on the Fallibility of Judicial Tribunals.

Let me here say that I hold judges, and especially the Supreme Court of the country, in much respect; but I am too familiar with the history of Judicial proceedings to regard them with any superstitious reverence. Judges are but men and in all ages have shown a full share of frailty. Alas! alas! the worst crimes of history have been perpetrated under their sanction. The blood of martyrs and of patriots, crying from the ground, summons them to judgment.

It was a judicial tribunal which condemned Socrates to drink the fatal hemlock, and which pushed the Saviour barefoot over the pavements of Jerusalem, bending beneath his cross. It was a judicial tribunal which, against the testimony and entreaties of her father, surrendered the fair Virginia as a slave; which arrested the teachings of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and sent him in bonds from Judea to Rome; which, in the name of the old religion, adjured the saints and fathers of the Christian Church to death, in all its most dreadful forms; and which afterwards in the name of the new religion, enforced the tortures of the Inquisition, amidst the shrieks and agonies of its victims, while it compelled Galileo to declare, in solemn denial of the great truth he had disclosed, that the earth did not move round the sun.

It was a judicial tribunal which, in France, during the long reign of her monarchs, lent itself to be the instrument of every tyranny, as during the brief reign of terror it did not hesitate to stand forth the unpitying accessory of the unpitying guillotine. Ay, sir, it was a judicial tribunal in England, surrounded by all the forms of law, which sanctioned every despotic caprice of Henry the eighth, from the unjust divorce of his queen to the beheading of Sir Thomas Moore; which lighted the fires of persecution, that glowed at Oxford and Smithfield, over the cinders of Latimer, Ridley, and John Rodgers; which, after elaborate argument, upheld the fatal tyranny of ship money against the patriotic resistance of Hampden; which, in defiance of justice and humanity, sent Sydney and Russell to the block; which persistently enforced the laws of conformity that our Puritan Fathers persistently refused to obey; and which afterwards, with Jeffries on the bench, crimsoned the pages of English history with massacre and murder, even with the blood of innocent women. Ay, sir, and it was a judicial tribunal in our country, surrounded by all the forms of law, which hung witches at Salem, which affirmed the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, while it admonished “jurors and the people” to obey; and which now, in our day, has lent its sanction to the unutterable atrocity of the Fugitive Slave Law.

Galusha A. Grow’s Speech on the Homestead Bill.

In the House of Representatives, March 30, 1852. “Man’s Right to the Soil.”

But even if the Government could derive any revenue from the actual sale of public lands, it is neither just nor sound policy to hold them for that purpose. Aware, however, that it is a poor place, under a one hour rule, to attempt to discuss any of the natural rights of men, for, surrounded by the authority of ages, it becomes necessary, without the time to do it, first to brush away the dust that has gathered upon their errors. Yet it is well sometimes to go back of the authority of books and treatises, composed by authors reared and educated under monarchical institutions, and whose opinions and habits of thought consequently were more or less shaped and moulded by such influences, and examine, by the light of reason and nature, the true foundation of government and the inherent rights of men.

The fundamental rights of man may be summed up in two words—Life and Happiness. The first is the gift of the Creator, and may be bestowed at his pleasure; but it is not consistent with his character for benevolence, that it should be bestowed for any other purpose than to be enjoyed, and that we call happiness. Therefore, whatever nature has provided for preserving the one, or promoting the other, belongs alike to the whole race. And as the means for sustaining life are derived almost entirely from the soil, every person has a right to so much of the earth’s surface as is necessary for his support. To whatever unoccupied portion of it, therefore, 3124he shall apply his labor for that purpose, from that time forth it becomes appropriated to his own exclusive use; and whatever improvements he may make by his industry become his property, and subject to his disposal.

The only true foundation of any right to property is man’s labor. That is property, and that alone which the labor of man has made such. What right, then, can the Government have in the soil of a wild and uncultivated wilderness as a source of revenue, to which not a day nor hour’s labor has been applied, to make it more productive, and answer the end for which it was created, the support and happiness of the race?

It is said by the great expounder of the common law in his commentaries, that “there is no foundation in nature or natural law, why a set of words upon parchment should convey the dominion of land.” The use and occupancy alone gives to man, in the language of the commentaries, “an exclusive right to retain, in a permanent manner, that specific land which before belonged generally to everybody, but particularly to nobody.” * * *

It may be said, true, such would be man’s right to the soil in a state of nature; but when he entered into society, he gave up part of his natural rights, in order to enjoy the advantages of an organized community. This is a doctrine, I am aware, of the books and treatises on society and government; but it is a doctrine of despotism, and belongs not to enlightened statesmen in a liberal age. It is the excuse of the despot in encroaching upon the rights of the subject. He admits the encroachment, but claims that the citizen gave up part of his natural rights when he entered into society; and who is to judge what ones he relinquished but the ruling power? It was not necessary that any of man’s natural rights should be yielded to the state in the formation of society. He yielded no right, but the right to do wrong, and that he never had by nature. All that he yielded in entering into organized society, was a portion of his unrestrained liberty, which was, that he would submit his conduct, that before was subject to the control of no living being, to the tribunals to be established by the state, and with a tacit consent that society, or the Government, might regulate the mode and manner of the exercise of his rights. Why should he consent to be deprived of them? It is upon this ground that we justify resistance to tyrants. Whenever the ruling power so far encroaches upon the natural rights of men that an appeal to arms becomes preferable to submission, they appeal from human to divine laws, and plead the natural rights of man in their justification. That government, and that alone, is just, which enforces and defends all of man’s natural rights, and protects him against the wrongs of his fellow-men. But it may be said, although such might be the natural rights of men, yet the Government has a right to these lands, and may use them as a source of revenue, under the doctrine of eminent domain. * * *

What is there in the constitution of things giving to one individual the sole and exclusive right to any of the bounties provided by nature for the benefit and support of the whole race, because, perchance, he was the first to look upon a mere fragment of creation? By the same process of reasoning, he who should first discover the source or mouth of a river, would be entitled to a monopoly of the waters that flow in the channel, or he who should first look upon one of the rills or fountains of the earth might prevent fainting man from quenching there his thirst, unless his right was first secured by parchment.

Why has the claim to monopolize any of the gifts of God to man been confined, by legal codes, to the soil alone? Is there any other reason than that it is a right which, having its origin in feudal times—under a system that regarded man but as an appendage of the soil that he tilled, and whose life, liberty and happiness, were but means of increasing the pleasures, pampering the passions and appetites of his liege lord—and, having once found a place in the books, it has been retained by the reverence which man is wont to pay to the past, and to time-honored precedents? The human mind is so constituted that it is prone to regard as right what has come down to us approved by long usage, and hallowed by gray age. It is a claim that had its origin with the kindred idea that royal blood flows only in the veins of an exclusive few, whose souls are more ethereal, because born amid the glitter of courts, and cradled amid the pomp of lords and courtiers, and, therefore, they are to be installed as rulers and law-givers of the race. Most of the evils that afflict society have had their origin in violence and wrong enacted into law by the experience of the past, and retained by the prejudices of the present.

Is it not time to sweep from the statute book its still lingering relics of feudalism; and to blot out the principles engrafted upon it by the narrow-minded policy of other times, and adapt the legislation of the country to the spirit of the age, and to the true ideas of man’s rights and relations to his Government? If a man has a right on earth, he has a right to land enough to rear a habitation on. If he has a right to live, he has a right to the free use of whatever nature has provided for his sustenance—air to breathe, water to drink, and land enough to cultivate for his subsistence; for 3125these are the necessary and indispensable means for the enjoyment of his inalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And is it for a Government that claims to dispense equal and exact justice to all classes of men, and that has laid down correct principles in its great chart of human rights, to violate those principles and its solemn declarations in its legislative enactments?