The greatest advantage of long life, at least to those who know how and wherefore to live, is the opportunity which it gives of seeing moral experiments worked out, of being present at the fructification of social causes, and of thus gaining a kind of wisdom which in ordinary cases seems reserved for a future life. An equivalent for this advantage is possessed by such as live in those critical periods of society when retribution is hastened, or displayed in clear connexion with the origin of its events. The present seems to be such an age. It is an age in which the societies of the whole world are daily learning the consequences of what their fathers did, the connexion of cause and effect being too palpable to be disputed; it is an age when the active men of the New World are beholding the results of their own early counsels and deeds. It seems, indeed, as if the march of events were everywhere accelerated for a time, so as to furnish some who are not aged with a few complete pieces of experience. Some dispensation—like the political condition of France, for instance—will still be centuries in the working out; but in other cases—the influence of eminent men, for example—results seem to follow more closely than in the slower and quieter past ages of the world. It is known to all how in England, and also in America, the men of the greatest intellectual force have sunk from a higher to a far lower degree of influence from the want of high morals. It seems as if no degree of talent and vigour can long avail to keep a man eminent in either politics or literature, unless his morals are also above the average. Selfish vanity, double-dealing, supreme regard to expediency, are as fatal to the most gifted men in these days, and almost as speedily fatal, as intellectual capacity to a pretender. Men of far inferior knowledge and power rise over their heads in the strength of honesty; and by dint of honesty (positive or comparitive) retain the supremacy, even through a display of intellectual weakness and error of which the fallen make their sport. This is a cheering sign of the times, indicating that the days are past when men were possessed by their leaders, and that the time is coming when power will be less unfairly distributed, and held on a better tenure than it has been. It indicates that traitors and oppressors will not, in future, be permitted to work their will and compass their purposes at the expense of others, till guilty will and purpose are prostrated on the threshold of eternity. It indicates that that glorious and beautiful spectacle of judgment may be beheld in this world which religious men have referred to another, when the lowly shall be exalted; when, unconscious of their dignity, they shall, with amazement, hear themselves greeted as the blessed of the Father, and see themselves appointed to a moral sovereignty in comparison with whose splendour
"Grows dim and dies
All that this world is proud of. From their spheres
The stars of human glory are cast down;
Perish the roses and the flowers of kings,
Princes, and emperors, and the crowns and palms
Of all the mighty, withered and consumed."
However long it may be before the last shred of tinsel may be cast into the fire, and the last chaff of false pretence winnowed away, the revolution is good and secure as far as it goes. Moral power has begun its long series of conquests over physical force and selfish cunning, and the diviner part of man is a guarantee that not one inch of the ground gained shall ever be lost. For our encouragement, we are presented with a more condensed evidence of retribution than has hitherto been afforded to the world. Moral causes seem to be quickened as well as strengthened in their operation by the new and more earnest heed which is given to them.
In the New World, however long some moral causes may be in exhibiting their results, there have been certain deeds done which have produced their consequences with extraordinary rapidity and an indisputable clearness. May all men open their eyes to see them, and their hearts to understand them!
The people of the United States were never under a greater temptation to follow temporary expediency in preference to everlasting principle than in the case of the admission of Missouri, with slave institutions, into the Union. To this temptation they yielded, by a small majority of their representatives. The final decision rested, as it happened, in the hands of one man, Mr. Clay; but it is to the shame of the North (which had abolished slavery) that it did so happen. The decision was made to prefer custom and expediency to principle; it was hoped that, if the wind were once got under confinement, something would prevent its bursting forth as the whirlwind.
The plea of slaveholders, and a plausible one up to the year 1820, was that slavery was not an institution of their choice or for which they were answerable: it was an inherited institution. Since the year 1820 this plea has become hypocrisy; for in that year a deliberate vote was passed by Congress to perpetuate slavery in the Union by admitting a new state whose institutions had this basis. The new states northwest of the Ohio were prohibited from introducing slavery by the very act of cession of the land; and nothing could have been easier than to procure the exclusion of slavery from Missouri by simply refusing to admit any new state whose distinguishing institution was one incompatible in principle with the principles on which the American Constitution was founded. Missouri would undoubtedly have surrendered slavery, been admitted, and virtuously flourished, like her neighbour Illinois. But there was division of opinion; and, because the political device of the Union seemed in danger, the eternal principles of justice were set aside, and protection was deliberately pledged to slavery, not only in Missouri, but, as a consequence, in Arkansas and Florida. The Constitution and Declaration of Rights of Missouri, therefore, exhibit the following singular mixture of declarations and provisions. It will be seen afterward how they are observed.
"The general assembly shall not have power to pass laws,
"1. For the emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners; or without paying them, before such emancipation, a full equivalent for such slaves so emancipated; and,
"2. To prevent bonâ fide emigrants to this state, or actual settlers therein, from bringing from any of the United States, or from any of their territories, such persons as may there be deemed to be slaves, so long as any persons of the same description are allowed to be held as slaves by the laws of this state.
"It shall be their duty, as soon as may be, to pass such laws as may be necessary,