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of the Free States, have been obstructed in their honest avocations, and have suffered imprisonment and outrage for no crime, but their complexion; it is probable that some have been consigned to a life-long servitude. But Slavery is impartial where the defence of her own privileges are concerned, and fresh victims have been seized and punished on suspicion of assisting in the escape of fugitives from the house of bondage. Words and looks of pity are now contraband in the Southern States, and they may be bestowed only at the peril of the giver. Indeed, no man is safe from judicial or popular violence, who exercises his constitutional privilege of using his citizenship, in a Slave State, and who is not ready to utter the most servile of the shibboleths of Slavery. If suspicion is aroused against him, where every eye is full of suspicion, there is no protection for him in the name of citizen, or in the safeguards of the Constitution; he may, in very possible cases, have to choose between falling down and worshipping the national idol and being thrown into the hottest furnace of fanatical persecution. And it is just that it should be so. If the strong tamely suffer the weak and the helpless, those for whose protection civil government, in theory at least, was mainly established, to be treated as if there were no rights and no Constitution securing them, they have no just reason to complain when the same measure is meted to themselves. The more impartially the South bestows its injuries, the less distinction it makes in the distribution of its wrongs, between the white and the black, the bond and the free, the more hope is there that an adequate spirit of resistance may be roused which shall end them all together.

But black and lowering as the Southern skies still are, there are not wanting occasional gleams of light which are the harbingers of a happier day. Symptoms are manifested, from time to time, and at distant points, of a growing discontent on the part of the white population of the Slave States who are not slaveholders. This class of people stand, perhaps,

nearer to the slaves in the virtual privation of civil, if not personal freedom, than any other inhabitants of the country. They are made to feel every day and every hour that they are in the presence of an overshadowing aristocracy. Whatever may be the flatteries of demagogues, on the eve of elections, they feel that their condition is despised, their labor disgraceful, and their endeavors to improve their condition obstructed. The more intelligent among them are beginning to attribute this state of things to its true cause. In Maryland and Virginia, as well as in Kentucky, the subject is openly discussed in the public prints; and in Virginia there seems to be every prospect of a successful attempt to break down the principle of Slave-representation, which has placed the political power of the South in the hands of the Slaveholders, at the convention which is soon to assemble for the revision of the Constitution. In Tennessee and Missouri, and even in North Carolina, there have been symptoms of this growing disaffection. The painful contrast which the Slave States, which border on the Free, afford to their neighbors in wealth, population and intelligence, is beginning to be more deeply felt, and more generally attributed to its real origin. Here we perhaps discern the first workings of an element, which may ere long be seen entering largely into the solution of the great problem of practical Emancipation.

CASSIUS M. CLAY.

Among all these hopeful auguries, arising to us from the thick darkness which hangs over the Slave States, that afforded by the movement of CASSIUS M. CLAY, in Kentucky, must be regarded as by far the most signal and the most conspicuous. For a long time the friends of Freedom throughout the country had been watching with anxious curiosity to see whether the course which this gentleman had only begun

would be persevered in and consistently carried out. The boldness of his denunciation of the Slave system, and his fearless exposure of its evils, enforced by his emancipation of his own hereditary slaves, had attracted the attention, not only of Abolitionists, but of the country, to his career. Its onward progress has certainly been no less interesting and instructive than its commencement. In January he issued an address to the people of Kentucky, in which he set forth in eloquent and emphatic language the evils which Slavery had entailed upon Kentucky, and drew a glowing contrast of the difference between her estate and that of the Free States around her. He depicted the dependent condition of the poor white population, and declared that experience had proved the incompatibility of Slavery and popular education. He concluded by earnest appeals to the people to take instant measures to procure the removal of this curse from the soil.

Early in June Mr. CLAY began, at Lexington, the publication of the "True American," a weekly paper, devoted to the cause of Gradual Emancipation in Kentucky. It was characterized by the same bold and energetic spirit, which had marked his previous public action on Slavery. Its appearance excited a very general attention, and it was sustained by a large subscription list in the Free States, as well as in Kentucky. It was hardly to be expected, however, that such an enterprise could be carried on, with earnestness and resolution, in the heart of a Slave State, without exciting a deep and bitter opposition. Accordingly, when about ten numbers had appeared, symptoms of impatience began to manifest themselves, which soon took a palpable shape. At the time selected for the commencement of the attack upon his paper, Mr. CLAY was suffering from a typhoid fever, which prevented him from making any forcible resistance, could he have judged such resistance feasible or prudent, under the circumstances of the case. A small meeting was held on the 15th of August, which appointed a committee to communicate to him a reso

lution requesting him to discontinue the True American, "as dangerous to the peace of our community and to the safety of our homes and families." To this demand Mr. CLAY replied with a refusal, couched in burning words of indignation and contempt. The meeting was then adjourned to the 18th of August. In the mean time Mr. CLAY issued an address, explaining the nature of his plan of emancipation (combining the principles of gradualism and compensation), and denying that he had ever used language of a nature to excite insurrection among the slaves. On the appointed day a numerous multitude assembled, who, stimulated by an inflammatory speech from THOMAS F. MARSHALL, a personal enemy of Mr. CLAY'S, (and encouraged by the presence and approving words of exGovernor Metcalfe,) resolved that "the press should stop,' which they would effect" peaceably if they could, forcibly if they must." To carry out this determination, a committee of sixty, of which Mr. JAMES B. CLAY, a son of HENRY CLAY, (who retired on the day previous to that fixed upon for this outrage on his kinsman and ardent supporter, to partake of the festivities of a neighboring watering-place), was a personal member, for the purpose of taking possession of the press and sending it beyond the limits of the State. This duty they triumphantly performed, and sent it, subject to the order of its owner, to Cincinnati. After this gallant exploit the committee reported their success, and the meeting adjourned, flushed with victory, and hoping that they had now given its quietus to this dan-gerous agitation.

But what are the hopes of man! To their astonishment they found that they had only given to it a new impulse. A strong sensation was created in Kentucky, itself, and men began earnestly to inquire what this new thing was which it was so dangerous that they should know. A public meeting was immediately held in Cincinnati, to take measures for the safekeeping of the press, and to express their sympathy with Mr. CLAY, and their indignation at the injurious treatment he had.

received. To these expressions of regard, Mr. CLAY replied in a letter which breathed a resolute and unbroken spirit; denied the calumnious assertion that he had offered to discontinue the paper, if his property were spared; and declared that, "as to his press, his motto of God and Liberty should never be struck," and that "it was for those who fight for the wrong to despair in defeat." Public meetings were held in many other places to express their sense of this outrage on the liberty of the press. The effect of this act of violence, therefore, was such as all acquainted with the nature of the human mind, or with the history of reformations, knew to be inevitable, to make the injured party grasp his principles with a firmer hand, and to give him a yet wider field and a better opportunity to disseminate them.

It was not long before Mr. CLAY fulfilled the pledge, implied in his answer to the Cincinnati resolutions, and in about two months after the suppression of the True American, it made its twelfth appearance, containing a long " appeal,” in which he put on record the history of the base transactions of the 18th of August, defended his own conduct, and showed to the non-slaveholders of Kentucky that they were virtually enslaved. He concluded with a hope that what he had suffered, and what he might yet suffer, would "arouse in the bosom of Americans, an honorable shame and a magnanimous remorse, which would lead to the peaceful overthrow of the slave-despotism of this nation." These are the concluding words of this admirable paper: "To the liberty of my country and of mankind, then, I dedicate myself, and those whom I hold most dear, and for the purity of my motives and the patriotism of my life, the past and the future, I appeal to Kentucky and to the world!"

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This brief history is full of instructions. It shows the falsehood of the assertion that Kentucky was ready for a prospective manumission of her slaves, at the time the cry of Immediate Emancipation was raised, and that it is owing to the

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