ots, and all that enthusiasm for justice and liberty, did not avail to keep us safe in such a Union, what will? In such desperate circumstances, can his statesmanship devise no better aim than to try the same experiment over again, under precisely the same conditions? What new guarantees does he propose to prevent the voyage from being turned again into a piratical Slave-trading cruise? None! Have sixty years taught us nothing? In 1660, the English thought, in recalling Charles II., that the memory of that scaffold which had once darkened the windows of Whitehall, would be guarantee enough for his good behaviour. But, spite of the spectre, Charles II. repeated Charles I., and James outdid him. Wiser by this experience, when the nation, in 1689, got another chance, they trusted to no guarantees, but so arranged the very elements of their government, that William III. could not repeat Charles I. Let us profit by the lesson. These mistakes of leading men merit constant attention. Such remarks, as those I have quoted, uttered from the high places of political life, however carefully guarded, have a sad influence on the rank and file of the party. By such speeches and avowals, the Free Soil presses are encouraged to advise, as in Ohio, that we should be satisfied to have Slaves sent back, for the present, by State authority and jury trials; holding out the hope that thus we shall sooner and more readily abolish the whole system. The Anti-Slavery awakening has cost too many years and too much labor to risk letting its energy be turned into a wrong channel, or balked by fruitless experiments. Neither the Slave nor the country must be cheated a second time.

It seems

Mr. Chairman, when I remember the grand port of these men elsewhere, and witness this confusion of ideas, and veiling of their proud crests to party necessities, they seem to me to lose in Washington something of their old giant proportions. How often have we witnessed this change! the inevitable result of political life under any government, but especially under ours and we are surprised at it in these men, only because we fondly hoped they would be exceptions to the general rule. It was CHAMFORT, I think, who first likened a Republican Senate House to MILTON's Pandemonium; another proof of the rare insight French writers have shown in criticising Republican Institutions. The Capitol at Washington always brings to my mind that other Capitol, which in MILTON's great Epic "rose like an exhalation" "from the burning marl" starry lamps and blazing cressets" hung-with stately height, its hall "like a covered field." of archangels gathered round it, and how thick the airy crowd

that towered palace, "with "roof of fretted gold" and You remember, Sir, the host

"Swarmed and were straitened; till, the signal given,
Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed

In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons,

Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room

Throng numberless, like that pygmean race

Beyond the Indian mount; or fairy elves,

Whose midnight revels, by a forest side

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees.

*

Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms
Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large,
Though without number still, amid the hall
Of that infernal court."

Mr. Chairman, they got no farther than the hall! (Cheers.) They were not, in the current phrase, "a healthy party!" The healthy party, — the men who made no compromise in order to come under that arch, — MILTON describes further on, where he says

"But far within,

And in their own dimensions, like themselves,
The great seraphic lords and cherubim,

In close recess and secret conclave, sat;
A thousand demi-gods on golden seats
Frequent and full."

These were the healthy party! (Loud applause.) These are the CASSES and the HOUSTONS, the FoOTES and the SOULES, the CLAYS, the WEBSTERS and the DOUGLASES, that bow no lofty forehead in the dust, but can find ample room and verge enough under the Constitution. Our friends go down there, and must be dwarfed into pigmies before they can find space within the lists! (Cheers.)

It would be superfluous to say that we grant the entire sincerity and trueheartedness of these men. But in critical times, when a wrong step entails most disastrous consequences, to "mean well" is not enough. Sincerity is no shield for any man from the criticism of his fellow-laborers. I do not fear that such men as these will take offence at our discussion of their views and conduct. Long years of hard labor, in which we have borne at least our share, have resulted in a golden opportunity. How to use it, friends differ. Shall we stand courteously silent, and let these men play out the play, when, to our thinking, their plan will slacken the zeal, balk the hopes, and waste the efforts of the Slave's friends? No! I know CHARLES SUMNER's love for the cause so well, that I am sure he will welcome my criticism whenever I deem his counsel wrong; that he will hail every effort to serve our common client more efficiently. (Great cheering.) It is not his honor nor mine that is at issue; not his feeling nor mine that is to be consulted. The only question for either of us is, What in these golden moments can be done where can the hardest blow be struck? (Loud applause.) I hope I am just to Mr. SUMNER; I have known him long, and honor him. I know his genius-I honor his virtues; yet if, from his high place, he sends out counsels which I think dangerous to the cause, I am bound to raise my voice against them. I do my duty in a private communication to him first, then in public to his friends and mine. The friendship that will not bear this criticism is but the frost-work of a winter's morning, which the sun looks upon and it is gone. His friendship will survive all that I say of him, and mine will survive all that he shall say of me; and this is the only way in which the Anti-Slavery cause can be served. Truth, success, victory, triumph over the obstacles that beset us- this is all either of us wants. (Cheers.)

If all I have said to you is untrue, if I have exaggerated, explain to me this fact. In 1831, Mr. GARRISON commenced a paper advocating the doctrine of immediate emancipation. He had against him the thirty thousand churches and all the clergy of the country-its wealth, its commerce, its press. In 1831, what was the state of things? There was the most entire

ignorance and apathy on the Slave question. If men knew of the existence of Slavery, it was only as a part of picturesque Virginia life. No one preached, no one talked, no one wrote about it. No whisper of it stirred the surface of the political sea. The Church heard of it occasionally, when some Colonization agent asked funds to send the blacks to Africa. Old school books tainted with some Anti-Slavery selections, had passed out of use, and new ones were compiled to suit the times. Soon as any dissent from the prevailing faith appeared, every one set himself to crush it. The pulpits preached at it: the press denounced it: mobs tore down houses, threw presses into the fire and the stream, and shot the editors: religious conventions tried to smother it: parties arrayed themselves against it. DANIEL WEBSTER boasted in the Senate, that he had never introduced the subject of Slavery to that body, and never would. Mr. CLAY, in 1839, makes a speech for the Presidency, in which he says, that to discuss the subject of Slavery is moral treason, and that no man has a right to introduce the subject into Congress. Mr. BENTON, in 1844, laid down his platform, and he not only denies the right, but asserts he never has and never will discuss the subject. Yet Mr. CLAY, from 1839 down to his death, hardly made a remarkable speech of any kind, except on Slavery. Mr. WEBSTER, having indulged now and then in a little easy rhetoric, as at NIBLO's and elsewhere, opens his mouth in 1840, generously contributing his aid to both sides, and stops talking about it only when death closes his lips. Mr. BENTON's six or eight speeches in the United States Senate have all been on the subject of Slavery in the Southwestern section of the country, and form the basis of whatever claim he has to the character of a statesman, and he owes his seat in the next Congress somewhat, perhaps, to Anti-Slavery pretensions! The Whig and Democratic parties pledged themselves just as emphatically against the Anti-Slavery discussion against agitation and free speech. These men said, "It shan't be talked about, it won't be talked about!" These are your statesmen! - - men who understand the present, that is, and mould the future! The man who understands his own time, and whose genius moulds the future to his views, he is a statesman, is he not? These men devoted themselves to banks, to the tariff, to internal improvements, to constitutional and financial questions. They said to Slavery "Back! no entrance here! We pledge ourselves against you." And then there came up a humble printer boy, who whipped them into the traces, and made them talk, like Hotspur's starling, nothing BUT Slavery. He scattered all these gigantic shadows — tariff, bank, constitutional questions, financial questions — and Slavery, like the colossal head in Walpole's romance, came up and filled the whole political horizon! (Enthusiastic applause.) Yet you must remember he is not a statesman; he is a "fanatic." He has no discipline - Mr. "ION" says so; he does not understand the "discipline that is essential to victory"! This man did not understand his own time- he did not know what the future was to be - he was not able to shape it- he had no "prudence - he had no "" foresight"! DANIEL WEBSTER says, "I have never introduced this subject, and never will" and died broken-hearted because he had not been able to talk

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and

enough about it. BENTON says, "I will never speak of Slavery" lives to break with his party on this issue! Mr. CLAY says it is "moral treason" to introduce the subject into Congress, and lives to see Congress turned into an Anti-Slavery Debating Society, to suit the purpose of one "too powerful individual !

-I

These were statesmen, mark you! Two of them have gone to their graves covered with eulogy; and our national stock of eloquence is all insufficient to describe how profound and far-reaching was the sagacity of DANIEL WEBSTER! Remember who it was that said, in 1831, "I am in earnest will not equivocate - I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inchand I will be heard!" (Repeated cheers.) That speaker has lived twentytwo years, and the complaint of twenty-three millions of people is, "Shall we never hear of anything but Slavery?" (Cheers.) I heard Dr. KIRK, of Boston, say in his own pulpit, when he returned from London - where he had been as a representative to the " Evangelical Alliance" I went up

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to London, and they asked me what I thought of the question of immediate emancipation? They examined us all. Is an American never to travel anywhere in the world, but men will throw this troublesome question in his face?" Well, it is all HIS fault [pointing to MR. GARRISON.] (Enthusiastic cheers.)

Now, when we come to talk of statesmanship, of sagacity in choosing time and measures, of endeavor, by proper means, to right the public mind, of keen insight into the present and potent sway over the future, it seems to me that the Abolitionists, who have taken—whether for good or for ill, whether to their discredit or to their praise this country by the four corners, and shaken it until you can hear nothing but Slavery, whether you travel in railroad or steamboat, whether you enter the hall of legislation or read the columns of a newspaper · it seems to me that such men may point

to the present aspect of the nation, to their originally avowed purpose, to the pledges and efforts of all your great men against them, and then let you determine to which side the credit of sagacity and statesmanship belongs. Napoleon busied himself, at St. Helena, in showing how WELLINGTON ought not to have conquered at Waterloo. The world has never got time to listen to the explanation. Sufficient for it that the Allies entered Paris. In like manner, it seems hardly the province of a defeated Church and State to deny the skill of measures by which they have been conquered!

It may sound strange to some, this claim for Mr. GARRISON of a profound statesmanship. Men have heard him styled a mere fanatic so long, that they are incompetent to judge him fairly. "The phrases men are accustomed," says Goethe, "to repeat incessantly, end by becoming convictions, and ossify the organs of intelligence." I cannot accept you, therefore, as my jury. I appeal from Festus to Cæsar; from the prejudice of our streets to the common sense of the world, and to your children.

Every thoughtful and unprejudiced mind must see that such an evil as Slavery will yield only to the most radical treatment. If you consider the work we have to do, you will not think us needlessly aggressive, or that we dig down unnecessarily deep in laying the foundations of our enterprise.

A money power of two thousand millions of dollars, as the prices of Slaves now range, held by a small body of able and desperate men; that body raised into a political aristocracy by special constitutional provisions; cotton, the product of Slave labor, forming the basis of our whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus subsidized; the press bought up, the pulpit reduced to vassalage, the heart of the common people chilled by a bitter prejudice against the black race; our leading men bribed, by ambition, either to silence or open hostility in such a land, on what shall an Abolitionist rely? On a few cold prayers, mere lip service, and never from the heart? On a Church Resolution, hidden often in its records, and meant only as a decent cover for servility in daily practice? On political parties, with their superficial influence at best, and seeking, ordinarily, only to use existing prejudices to the best advantage? Slavery has deeper root here than any aristocratic institution has in Europe; and Politics is but the common pulsebeat of which Revolution is the fever spasm. Yet we have seen European aristocracy survive storms which seemed to reach down to the primal strata of European life. Shall we then trust to mere Politics where even Revolution has failed? How shall the stream rise above its fountain? Where shall our Church organizations or parties get strength to attack their great parent and moulder, the Slave Power? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? The old jest of one who tried to lift himself in his own basket, is but a tame picture of the man who imagines that, by working solely through existing sects and parties, he can destroy Slavery. Mechanics say nothing but an earthquake, strong enough to move all Egypt, can bring down the Pyramids.

Experience has confirmed these views. The Abolitionists who have acted on them have a "short method" with all unbelievers. They have but to point to their own success, in contrast with every other man's failure. To waken the nation to its real state, and chain it to the consideration of this one duty, is half the work. So much we have done. Slavery has been made the question of this generation. To startle the South to madness, so that every step she takes, in her blindness, is one step more toward ruin, is much This we have done. Witness Texas and the Fugitive Slave Law. To have elaborated for the nation the only plan of redemption, pointed out the only Exodus from this "sea of troubles," is much. This we claim to have done in our motto of IMMEDIATE, UNCONDITIONAL EMANCIPATION ON THE SOIL. The closer any statesmanlike mind looks into the question, the more favor our plan finds with it. The Christian asks fairly of the Infidel, "If this Religion be not from God, how do you explain its triumph, and the history of the first three centuries?' Our question is similar. If our agitation has not been wisely planned and conducted, explain for us the history of the last twenty years! Experience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects success in future from the same means which have secured it in times past.