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everything was prostituted to some form of religion. Slavery was the state, the church, the all-the one thing to be sustained at all hazards. No man can read the clauses of these enactments, as they stand on the statute-book, without deriving the profoundest conviction that the authors of them were playing a desperate game, in which no consideration of principle or honor entered, but the whole was fraud.

of monarchical despotism, when our forefathers of England laid the foundation of that glorious polity which sheds a lustre upon the Anglo-Saxon name, these were the guiding stars of all their struggles. At this day, on the continent of Europe, the heaviest grievance of the oppressed multitudes, for the removal of which they have often undertaken desperate and sanguinary revolutions, is their deprivation of the rights of free opinion and utterance in Cheated of all legitimate government, regard to the action of government, and there remained two courses for the actual the institutions of society. Yet, these settlers to pursue-to appeal to the legislators of Kansas-in view of these federal authority to maintain its own, holy and imprescriptible rights-rights grossly violated, and to undertake to which are the very essence of a free institute a government for themselves, commonwealth-in the hot haste of and both these courses were pursued. pirates, eager for the life of their vic- Unfortunately, and by a singular forgettims-struck them out of existence. fulness of duty, to use no harsher term, Those precious defenses of the citizen- the federal authority had already comspeech, the press, the bar, the jury-mitted itself to the cause of the villains. were alike invaded with inquisitorial zeal. It was enacted, 1st, that any person who should print, write, or speak anything against the right to hold slaves in the territory," should be deemed guilty of a felony: 2d, that no person should exercise the elective franchise, or be allowed to practice in the courts, without first swearing to support the fugitive slave law: 3d, that any person speaking or writing anything calculated" to promote a disorderly, dangerous, or rebellious disaffection among slaves," should be punishable with imprisonment at hard labor for five years: 4th, that any person aiding a slave to escape, or assisting at an insurrection, should suffer death: and 5th, that no person opposed to slavery could sit on a jury in which offenses against these acts were brought in question! and, finally, as if these provisions themselves were not enough, the future elections of the territory were so arranged, that persons opposed to slavery were disfranchised, and everybody else, whether an actual citizen or not, on the payment of a nominal tax, was suffered to vote. entire scheme, it will be seen, had nothing in it of legislation for a community of mingled opinions, but was throughout a proscription and a persecution of a particular class. Every thing was to be prostituted to slavery, as in the darker ages of the world

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Whether it was imbecility, or roguery, or sheer tyranny, or all these combined, which constrained him, does not appear, but the President who in Massachusetts had used the army of the United States to capture a runaway negro, could find no occasion for his interference in the armed resistance of a mob to an ordinance of Congress. On the other hand, he did whatever he could, indirectly, to encourage the sedition. He patronized its agents-he instructed his own agents to assist and abet them-and at last, when a direct blow in behalf of slavery would be most effective, he found the right, so long held in abeyance, to order an army into the territory. Meanwhile, the settlers had adopted the second alternative, of framing a government for themselves. In technical strictness, the authority for this proceeding ought to have come through Congress; but as the popular doctrine, as the doctrine on which the territory itself was organized, was that of "squatter sovereignty," and as precedents existed in the cases of Michigan, Arkansas and California-in which states had been formed without the aid of Congress-they concluded, with Madison, that in such emergencies "forms ought to give way to substance."* With all due publicity, and in the most perfect order, a new government was formed, its officers appointed, and application for admission into the Union made.

*Federalist, No. 40.

But in the way of the execution of this design, harmless as it appears, there stood two formidable lions. In the first place, the wretches, who had at the outset plundered them of their rights, gathering strength and number from the encouragement of the pro-slavery party everywhere, were again ready to pounce upon them; and, in the second place, the United States authorities, judges, juries, marshals, colonels, sergeants and dragoons, under new definitions of treason, and the most audacious stretches of law, and to the utter disregard of justice, were sent to assist at the cremation. Between the two, the friends of the Free State cause were crushed to the earth, their leaders were arrested, their property pillaged, their houses burnt, and their families dispersed. The details of the infamous rout still fill the journals. A systematic suppression of freedom, begun by the outlaws of the frontier, has been conducted to a bloody end by the administration. It would seem as if freedom in Kansas had become an irritation and a nuisance to men in power, just as the simple worship of the Albigeois was to the fierce zeal of the Dominicans, or as the trade, the wealth, and the independence of the Netherlands became to Philip the Second. Its presence there disturbs and rebukes them, like the presence of Mordecai at the gate of the king. They have left

no

means untried "to wipe it out." Doubtless, there has been considerable exaggeration in the reports of the trials and sufferings to which the settlers have been exposed; doubtless, there have been excesses, both of word or deed, committed by themselves; for, in times of high excitement, a uniform temperance is not to be expected; but the single fact which glares upon us through all the turmoil and all the conflicting rumors is, that a peaceful and honest movement in behalf of freedom has been extinguished by force. Disguise it as we may, palliate or justify it as we may, this is still the fact; and it falls upon the heart with a frightful, almost stunning effect. In the middle of the nineteenth century, in a land preeminent for its pretensions to liberty, an effort to save the future key of the continent, from the universally acknowleged evils of human bondage, has been precipitately, wantonly, disastrously arrested, if not forever baffled. It is a fact which compels us to inquire, whe

ther our pride in the supposed superiority of our age and nation, in the spirit of justice, and in the love of rational liberty, may not prove after all but a pleasing self-deception.

These are the public or general causes of that erethism of politics which marks a feverish access; but, to increase its energy, there came upon the top of the deplorable events in Kansas an event of a personal nature, which possessed also a national significance. We refer to the disgraceful attack upon Mr. Sumner, in the Senate of the United States. That any man, were he the most despicable member of that body, should be stricken to the floor by the hands of a member of the other House, for the just exercise of his constitutional rights, and for the faithful expression of the sentiments of his constituents. is an offense which ought to excite a universal reprobation. But when that man is one of its most accomplished members -a gentleman by habit and education, a scholar in his taste, a profound jurist, an eloquent speaker, an upright citizen, as remarkable for the amiableness as he is for the dignity of his deportment. and whose fame has penetrated both hemispheres-the offense grows into an enormity beyond the reach of language to describe. We share in the feeling of earnest indignation with which it has been almost everywhere rebuked at the North, but this feeling is not unmingled with a deeper one of humiliation and alarm. We are humiliated by the thought that the manliness, the honor, the good sense of the republic should have so far degenerated, in any quarter, as to admit, and what is worse,to approve a brutality so gross. And we are alarmed lest, in the reaction of the public mind against the outrage, it should be led to nurse its exasperated feelings into a settled purpose of revenge. The best of men often retain so much of the animal in their composition that they are moved beyond themselves at the sight of blood

-si torrida parvus Venit in ora cruor, rediunt rabiesque, furorque"

and how much more apt are the multitude to be carried to an excess of rage? There was malice and uncharitableness enough in public sentiment before, without adding this fuel to the flame. There was violence enough in the tone

of public discussion, without extending it to actual blows. That game once begun, where is it to end? The people of the free states, fortunately, are, by their religious education and by their habits of industry, inclined to peace; they are docile, patient and forbearing qualities which men of violence are apt to despise-but, once aroused, and our word for it that same energy, which has enabled them to conquer themselves, to conquer the inclemencies of nature, to conquer by their enterprise every rebellious sea and every defying mountain, will be carried into the pursuits of strife. It is a most dangerous and formidable demon which the slave states invoke, when they conjure up the spirit of physical force. Like the Afrite of the eastern tale, it may seem to them only a bottle of smoke in the beginning, but that smoke, once let loose upon the air, its head will rise into clouds, and its hands become like winnowing forks, and its nostrils trumpets, and its eyes a consuming fire. The one great lesson taught of human history, written in crimson letters on a thousand pages, is a fearful commentary upon the text, that he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword." Unless the journalists and the public men, who have applauded this murderous deed, are prepared for the worst extremities, they will recall their insane and passionate approval. We cannot conceive a folly more suicidal for them than that which would appeal to the arbitrament by combat. If they dread free discussion, if they distrust the ulterior decisions of the ballot-box, they have still less to hope from a resort to arms.

It will be seen, that it is not a consolatory view we have been compelled to take of our public affairs, and yet they are not altogether hopeless. If the ruffianism of Washington and the borders should have the effect of awakening opinion to the real issues before the country, it will compensate for much of its evil. Under the existing organization of the government, and with the prevalent usages of parties, which have thrown them almost entirely into the hands of corrupt managers, nothing is to be expected from those sources. A regenerate and united public sentiment is alone equal to the task of retrieving our unhappy decline. The time has come when every honest man, whatever his party politics, who deems the Re

public worthy of his care, should determine to arrest the downward tendency of things. He is solemnly called upon, by every exigency of the times, to decide whether the materialism, the barbarism, the worst and lowest impulses of the social state, or the higher and better influences of our democratic civilization, are to prevail. Shall the generous and manly confidence of our fathers in the doctrine of human rights continue to be our life, or shall we surrender it to the narrow and base lusts of an oligarchy? Shall the magnificent empires growing up on the western shores of the Mississippi become the homes of an industrious, peaceful, beneficent freedom, or shall they be given over to the chain-gang and sterility? These are the questions of the day, and the trial question of our destiny. If the wicked scheme for the perpetuation and extension of slavery--of which the KansasNebraska bill was the first clause-is to be carried into complete effect-if the noble yearning for freedom, which is the inspiration and life of the North, is to be suppressed at Washington and excluded from the territories by forcelet Ichabod be written upon the doors of our temples, for the glory will be departed. It is impossible that slavery, and a vital, genuine republicanism, should thrive and spread together; it is impossible that bond labor and free labor should work cheek-by-jowl on the same soil; it is impossible that a special class should rule the people, and the people still retain their supremacy and power. In a nation otherwise free, slavery may prolong a subordinate existence for years, but when it leaps into the ascendant, the spring of the national life is broken. A disease may linger long on the extremities of a system, which would be fatal to it the moment it touches the great central organs. Confined to its original localities, the slave-system of the United States was pernicious only or chiefly within the limits of those localities; but when the spirit and the power of it invaded the general government, and sought a diffusion over the territories, it became a universal evil-an evil which, unless arrested and again confined to its primitive range, will dry up the sources of the most noble and glorious progress.

As we read the chronicles of the nations, from the dim traditions of the early eastern dynasties, through the

splendid annals of Greece and Rome, down to the latest record of our own era, we are struck by the uniformity with which, after a longer or shorter career, they have all succumbed to the influences of foreign conquest or of civil war. We see them grow for a time with marvelous rapidity; they attain to a broad and stately dominion-their storehouses swell with abundance, and their arts shed lustre on the age-but soon they sink as rapidly as they rose, and are left like ruins upon the desert-desolate and pitiable-the wolf howling from their deserted chambers, and the bitterns crying from their broken pools. The writers of history describe the mournful experience, and, wisely or unwisely, speculate upon its causes. They seek for a solution of the problem in fanaticism, in bad morals, in luxury, in the degeneracy of race, and in the inscrutable decrees of Providence and read us many a lesson out of the conclusions at which they arrive. But the prevalence of a cause, as universal as the effect, and as deep and powerful as the selfishness of man, they have not always signalized. It is that separating and corrosive spirit, which denies the equal claims of all humanity. "Whether we regard," says one, "the caste-systems of Egypt and India, the martial despotism of Persia, the rule of wealth and craft in Phoenicia, or the class-divisions of Greece and Rome and Judea, one obvious characteristic will be found pervading the ancient nations: everywhere the social fabric was built upon the assumption of the natural inequality of man, upon the necessary, because divinely appointed, inferiority of certain races. Not in the superstitious tenets and observances of heathen theology, nor in the absence of a law of right and wrong, nor in any want of the higher powers of humanity, nor in the fatal unconsciousness of their weakness, nor in any difficulties, from which we now have exemption, thrown in the way of a wider benevolence, nor in the lack of such advantages as we are licensed to reap from the discovery of printing, etc., but in the universal dogma of human inequality, we find the sufficing reason for the imperfect freedom and the inevitable decline of the greatest empires of antiquity." And while it is the peculiarity of Christianity, that it did proclaim the divine brotherhood

of man, not on the ground of any expediency or convenience, but upon the broad foundation of the common fatherhood of God, and the common redemption by Christ,-it is also true of all the Christian nations, that they have risen or fallen, according to their fidelity to this eternal standard. It was the de parture from this, by the dissolute emperors, which rendered the Western Empire an easy prey to the barbarians, and, after a protracted but ineffectual struggle, gave the Eastern Empire to the Turks: it was adherence to this which lifted the Papacy into European dominion, and the abandonment of it which toppled it from its throne: it was the popular sympathies of the Italian republics which made them, for nearly two centuries, the mothers of all industry, learning, and art, and the growth of aristocracy which consumed their strength: it was the bigotry, and farreaching despotism of Philip which prostrated the grand Spanish monarchy to a degradation and feebleness from which there has been no resurrection: and it was the heartless tyranny of the Louises which kindled the train of the world-explosive French revolution. If the Romanic nations were once like Lucifer, the sons of the morning, and have since fallen like Lucifer, it was because they admitted to their souls Lucifer's infernal ambition. If the Teutonic nations, and especially the Anglo-Saxon branch, have carried the principles of religion, of literature, of stable government, of progressive civilization over the world, it is because they, less than others, have accepted the downward, and backward, and paralyzing spirit of caste. Humanity is one, it is indissoluble, it is sacred; who lays his lightest finger upon it to do it harm, seals his own doom; he degrades and weakens himself in others; he touches the ark of God, in which he has deposited his most precious treasures.

When our country ceases to cherish a love for the rights of man, she will have parted with the secret of her strength. When she takes to her heart any other worship than that of humanity, justice, truth, she will have admitted the serpent into her Eden. Whatever may be the policy and the course of individual states, there is for the nation but one policy and one course. Our birthright of freedom is our only and eternal safeguard.

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Ir is gratifying to see the unanimity with which the English press has approved Mr. Motley's recent history of the rise of the Dutch Republic. Whatever may be the political or diplomatic difficulties between the two nations, it is certain that no ill feeling exists in the literary world. No young writer, publishing a book of mark, could desire a more heart-felt welcome than our countryman has received at the hands of all the accredited authorities of the British journals. Not only the daily and weekly papers, but the more elaborate quarterlies have spoken of his labors in terms of well-deserved praise. They do not scruple, of course, to point out his various defects of style, but the patient industry, the sound judgment, the nice discrimination of character, the eloquent narrative, and, above all, the noble enthusiasm for liberty and progress, which his work displays, they commend in the warmest

manner.

One of these critics, however, makes a ludicrous mistake as to the success of such books in the United States. Mr. Motley's volumes having been issued in London and New York simultaneously, the London Press supposes that they were published only in England, and observes very solemaly, that it is a great pity such writers as Mr. Prescott and Mr. Motley, in consequence of the small interest taken in literature in America, should be compelled to seek their market in England. At the time this learned gentleman penned his commiserating paragraph, Mr. Prescott's Philip the Second had reached a sale in this country of ten thousand copies, which, we venture to say, was just three times the number sold in Great Britain. Of the residue of Macaulay's History of England we venture the guess also, that the sale is quadruple what it is in his own country. Nor will the proposition be lost in the case of Mr. Motley's Dutch Republic. Our people are by no means uninterested in the best contemporary literature. The proof is, that all really good and valuable books, all histories that are likely to be standard history, all first-rate poetry, such as

AND

REPRINTS.

Tennyson's and Longfellow's, all brilliant essay-writing, and all readable narratives of travel, find a steady and continuous sale. A great deal is published, in the shape of novels, sketches, and other similar forms, which does not sell, because it ought not to sell. A great deal of trash is published also, which does sell,-more's the pity-but few genuine works now-a-days go a begging. If an author has been conscientious in his researches, has anything really good and new to communicate, and does so in a tolerably clear and effective style, he may be sure of a ready hearing. The publishers will be glad to get his manuscripts, and the public willing to listen to his instructions.

In spite of the adverse opinion of the London critic, we may assert without boasting, that, next to that of Germany, the reading circle of the United States is the most extensive in the world. There are more writers in France, and better writers in England, no doubt, than among ourselves, but these nations cannot compare with us as to the number of intelligent readers. And the promises are that we shall soon rival them in original authorship; as our primeval dependence wears away, as our writers learn to trust to their own inspirations-as the best talent gets more and more emancipated from the active pursuits of enterprise, by getting better paid for literary effort-we shall see a more vigorous exhibition of intellectual force in all departments of literary exertion. The influences of a democratic state of society tend, in the most decided manner, to the development of energy of mind; and it is perfectly rational to expect in this country a rapid and beautiful growth of all kinds of artistic ability. As it was at an early day, among the Grecian States, and at a later day among the Italian, where popular institutions drew forth such marvelous manifestations of mind, so it will be among the States of America. Every man is here thrown upon his native resources, and this appeal must in time call forth the best of every man. There is nothing to depress thought in this country, nothing to cramp

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