"Mark, if you please, that thus far I have only shown you the mere governmental organization of the slaveholding class in the United States, and pointed out its badges of supremacy, suggestive of your own debasement and humiliation. Contemplate now the reality of the power of that class, and the condition to which the cause of human nature has been reduced. In all the free States, the slaveholder argues and debates the pretensions of his class, and even prosecutes his claim for his slave before the delegate of the Federal Government, with safety and boldness, as he ought. He exhorts the citizens of the free States to acquiesce, and even threatens them, in their very homes, with the terrors of disunion, if that acquiescence is withheld; and he does all this with safety, as he ought, if it be done at all. He is listened to with patience, and replied to with decorum, even in his most arrogant declamations, in the halls of Congress. Through the effective sympathy of other property classes, the slaveholding power maintains with entire safety a press and permanent political organizations in all the free States. On the contrary, if you except the northern border of Delaware, there is nowhere in any slaveholding State personal safety for a citizen, even of that State itself, who questions the rightful national domination of the slaveholding class. Debate of its pretensions in the halls of Congress is carried on at the peril of limb and life. A free press is no sooner set up in a slaveholding State than it is demolished, and citizens who assemble peacefully to discuss even the extremest claims of slavery, are at first cautioned, and, if that is ineffectual, banished or slain, even more surely than the resistants of military despotism in the French empire. Nor, except just now, has the case been much better even in the free States. It is only as of yesterday, when the free citizens, assembled to discuss the exactions of the slaveholding class, were dispersed in Boston, Utica, Philadelphia and New York. It is only as of yesterday, that when I rose, on request of citizens of Michigan, at Marshall, to speak of the great political questions of the day, I was enjoined not to make disturbance or to give offence by speaking of free soil, even on the ground which the Ordinance of 1787 had saved to freedom. It was only as of yesterday that Protestant churches and theological seminaries, built on Puritan foundations, vied with the organs of the slaveholding class in denouncing a legislator who, in the act of making laws affecting its interests, declared that all human laws ought to be conformed to the standard of eternal justice. The day has not even yet passed when the press, employed in the service of education and morality, expurgates from the books which are put into the hands of the young all reflections on slavery. The day yet lasts when the flag of the United States flaunts defiance on the high seas over cargoes of human merchandise. Nor is there an American representative anywhere, in any of the four quarters of the globe, that does not labor to suppress even there the discussion of American slavery, lest it may possibly affect the safety of the slaveholding class at home. If, in a generous burst of sympathy with the struggling Protestant democracy of Europe, we bring off the field one of their fallen champions, to condole with and comfort him, we suddenly discern that the mere agitation of the principles of freedom tend to alarm the slaveholding class, and we cast him off again as a waif, not merely worthless, but dangerous to ourselves. The natural and ancient order of things is reversed; freedom has become subordinate, sectional and local; slavery, in its influence and combinations, has become predominant, national and general. Free, direct and manly utterance in the cause of freedom, even in the free States themselves, leads to ostracism, while superserviceability to the slaveholding class alone secures preferment in the national councils. The descendants of Franklin, and Hamilton, and Jay, and King, are unprized—

"In this course of rapid public demoralization, what wonder is it that the action of the Government tends continually with fearfully augmenting force to the aggrandizement of the slaveholding class? A government can never be better or wiser, or even so good or so wise as the people over whom it presides? Who can wonder, then, that the Congress of the United States, in 1820, gave to slavery the west bank of the Mississippi quite up to the present line of Kansas, and was content to save for freedom, out of the vast region of Louisiana, only Kansas and Nebraska! Who can wonder that it consented to annex and admit Texas, with power to subdivide herself into five slave States, so as to secure the slaveholding class a balance against the free States then expected to be ultimately organized in Kansas and Nebraska? Who can wonder, that when this annexation of Texas brought on a war with Mexico, which ended in the annexation of Upper California and New Mexico, every foot of which was free from African slavery, Congress divided that vast territory, reluctantly admitting the new State of California as a free State, because she would not consent to establish slavery, dismembered New Mexico, transferred a large portion of it to slaveholding Texas, and stipulated that what remained of New Mexico, together with Utah, should be received as slave States if the people thereof should so demand? Who can wonder that the President, without any reproof by Congress, simultaneously offered to Spain two hundred millions of dollars for the purchase of Cuba, that it might be divided into two slaveholding States, to be admitted as members of the Federal Union, and at the same time menaced the European Powers with war should they interfere to prevent the consummation of the purchase? Who can wonder that, emboldened with these concessions of the people, Congress at last sanctioned a reprisal by the slaveholding class upon the regions of Kansas and Nebraska, not on the ground of justice or for an equivalent, but simply on the ground that the original concession of them to freedom was extorted by injustice and unconstitutional oppression by the free States? Who can wonder that the slaveholding class, when it had obtained the sanction of Congress to that reprisal, by giving a pledge that the people of those territories should be perfectly free, nevertheless, to establish freedom therein, invaded the territory of Kansas with armed forces, inaugurated an usurpation, and established slavery there, and disfranchised the supporters of freedom by tyrannical laws, enforced by fire and sword, and that the President and Senate maintain and uphold the slaveholding interests in these culminating demonstrations of their power,