ENGLAND'S SELF-IMPOSED ODIUM.
It is a monstrous absurdity, nay it is an act of egregious hypocrisy, for England now to assume for herself an hypothetical guilt,—after bringing the African to her American Colonies for purposes of gain, and after exercising an intolerable tyranny over the white race in those colonies, and even invoking the aid of the tomahawk and scalping knife of the American savage in their attempted subjugation,—for the purpose now, when her arms and diplomacy have repeatedly failed, of seeking to overthrow the freedom of a Republic, which has risen, in despite of her, to such colossal proportions, as, in its very existence, to menace the combined monarchies of the world. But we hold these 4,000,000 of barbarians subject to the laws of civilization; and let England remember that we, even now, have the magnanimity to relieve her from the self-imposed odium of doing right! We now tell her monarchists, degenerate sons of illustrious sires, that in their maritime decadence they have also morally retrograded, for they now seek to restore these Africans to barbarism!
SLAVERY IS AN INCIDENT OF CIVILIZATION.
Let it not be claimed, even as a sophistical subterfuge, that the motive which brought the African here was mercenary, and that, therefore, his coming here was not justifiable. Commerce is the handmaid of civilization, and if his coming was only incidentally right, yet that incident belongs to civilization, which is amenable to the moral code, and is also to be commended, with all its incidental, as well as more matured blessings. The institutions of civilization rescued these 4,000,000 of barbarians from the dangers, degradation, and miseries of barbarism, and by causing them to subserve civilization, compelled them to do right. The English and American false philanthropists, monarchical emissaries, ecclesiastical parasites, and pseudo-republican traitors now demand that these Africans shall be restored to barbarism, not because it is practicable or possible, or right, but because the proposition involves the equality of these States, and consequently the existence of the American Union. The success of these conspirators depends upon an adequate numerical proportion of knaves and monomaniacs, the well-adjusted mechanism of monarchy for the overthrow of this Republic. Their success would forever settle the long mooted question of the capacity of Anglo-Saxon race for self government. Hence the lavish employment of British gold to suborn the American press, and seduce the American mind from the safe precepts of Washington, whose name is, and ever has been, a terror to the British oligarchy.
SOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT.
The only tribunal at which to try human actions, is the tribunal of justice. That which is right can stand the test of this tribunal; that which is wrong will shrink in terror from it. At this tribunal American Negro slavery has nothing to fear, because it is founded in moral right. Its advocacy is the advocacy of right, and right alone; unless, forsooth, we are to confound right with wrong, and declare barbarism equal with civilization. Of course, our argument is based upon the hypothesis that civilization is one thing, and barbarism another. To the mind which is so mentally and morally obtuse as not to discover the difference between these two conditions, this appeal must be in vain. But to the right-minded man, who is open to conviction of truth, who has the mental freedom to act and think independent of his prepossessions and prejudices, who is guided by his intellect, and reason, and not by passion nor prejudice, this solution of the slavery question, though new, must and will be satisfactory, because it is the logical result of a trial of the question at the tribunal of justice and of rights, because slavery rescues the African from wrong, and subjects him to the rule of right; because it rescues him from the wrongs and miseries of barbarism, and raises him to the primary elevation of a progressive and ennobling civilization.
EQUALITY OF THE STATES AND CITIZENS.
The equality of the sovereign States which compose the American Republic, and the equality of the citizens, both in the States and the Territories, constitute the true and only bond of union for the American people. This equality is the foundation stone upon which our whole social and political superstructure rests. To call this in question is to menace the very existence of the Union which is founded upon it. The sovereignty of the Union, extending over the Territories, where no other sovereignty exists, is the panoply of protection to all the inhabitants of the Territories. There they are all equal in person and property. There they are not sovereign, but subjects under the sovereignty of the united confederacy of States, which have no individual superiority and right in the Territories, neither for themselves, nor their citizens. For the inhabitants of such Territories to assume a sovereignty therein, not in accordance with the Constitution of the United States, not in conformity to law, and in violation of the equality of the people of the States there congregated, is usurpation. Nor can the democracy of numbers, nor the will of the majority of inhabitants congregated in such Territories be invoked to decide the rights of the people of the several States congregated in such Territories, either as to persons or property; because the sovereignty of the Union holds, until superseded by the sovereignty of a State constitutionally organized, deriving its sovereignty from the supreme authority of the confederated States, by whose assent alone the primordial sovereignty of the Union is so far abandoned as to admit the exercise of State sovereignty in such Territories. There would be no propriety nor justice in allowing an hypothetical sovereignty to a few thousands of individuals congregated in a large Territory, not one fiftieth part of which they occupied; allowing them to establish a rule of exclusion of the persons or property of the people of a portion of the States coming to settle in the Territories. Such persons have neither the right to decide for the present, nor the future; because at present they are not sovereign, and certainly they should not be allowed to exercise a usurped authority over the millions who shall occupy those Territories in the future. It is a morbid desire to forestall the future, in its judgment of barbarism, and of its fitness to subserve civilization, that creates the present animosity between the citizens of the different sections of the Union, going into the Territories. This is all wrong. The sovereignty of the Union is the present, and the sovereignty of States the future arbiter of the rights of the people in the Territories; all other power is assumed, arbitrary, gratuitous, and in violation of legitimate, delegated constitutional power.
The wisdom of the sages who founded the American Union left nothing for experiment to their successors, so far as the absolute equality of American citizens is concerned; and there is no safety but in the recognition of that perfect equality which the spirit of our race demands, and which the power of the civilized world will be invoked to maintain.