The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-28 00:00:00

is, " She comes from one of the obscure republics'
of North America. Let her pass on." Lastly,
public liberty, our own peculiar liberty, must lan-
guish for a time, and then cease to live. And such
a liberty ! free movement everywhere through
our own land and throughout the world ; free
speech, free press, free suffrage : the freedom of
every subject to vote on every law, and for or
against every agent who expounds, administers, or
executes It. Unstable and jealous confederacies,
constantly apprehending assaults without and trea-
son within, formidable only to each other and con-
temptible to all beside. How long will it be before,
on the plea of public safety, they will surrender all
this inestimable and unequalled liberty, and accept
the hateful and intolerable espionage of military
despotism ? And now, Mr. President, what is the
cause for this sudden and eternal sacrifice
of so much safety, greatness, happiness, and
freedom. Have foreign nations combined, and are
they coming in rage upon us ? No. So far from
being enemies, there is not a nation on the earth
that is not an interested, admiring friend. Has the
Federal Government become tyrannical or oppres-
sive, or even rigorous or unsound ? Has the Con-
stitution lost its spirit, and all at once collapsed
into a lifeless letter ? No ; the Federal Govern-
ment smiles more benignantly, and works to-day
mire beneficently, than ever. The Constitution
is even the chosen model for the organisation of
the newly rising confederacies. The occasion is the
election of a President of the United States, who
is unacceptable to a portion of the people. I state
the case accurately. There was no movement of dis-
union before the ballots which expressed that choice
were cast. Disunion began as soon as the result
was announced. The justification it assigned
was that Abraham Lincoln had been elected,
while the success of either one of the three other
candidates would have been acquiesced in. Was the
election illegal ? No ; it is unimpeachable. Is the
candidate personally offensive ? No ; he is a man of
unblemished virtue and amiable manners. Is an elec-
tion of President an unfrequent or extraordinary
transaction ? No ;we never had a chief magistrate
otherwise designated than by such election, and that
form of choice is renewed every four years. Does
any one even propose to change the mode of ap-
pointing the chief magistrate ? No. What, then,
is the ground of discontent? It is that the dis-
unionists did not accept as conclusive the arguments
which were urged in behalf of the successful condi-
date in the canvass. This is all. Were their own
arguments against him mere satisfactory to his
supporters ? Of course they were not, they could
not be. Does the Constitution, in letter or spirit,
require or imply that the arguments of one party
shall be satisfactory to the other ? No ; that is im-
possible ? What is the constitutional remedy for
this inevitable dissatisfaction ? Renewed debate
and ultimate rehearing in a subsequent election.
Have the American people, then, become all of a
sudden unnatural, as well as unpatriotic, and will
, they disinherit their children of the precious estate
• held only in trust for them, and deprive the world
of the best hopes it has enjoyed since the human
race began its slow and painful, yet needful and
, wisely-appointed progress? More than 30 years
• there has existed a considerable—though not here-
tofore formidable—mass of citizens in certain States
situate near or around the delta of the Mississipi,
who believe that the Union is less conducive to the
welfare and greatness of those States than a smaller
confederacy, embracing only slave States, would
be. This class has availed itself of the discontents
resulting from the election to put into operation
the machinery of dissolution long ago prepared,
and waiting only for occasion. In other States
there is a soreness because of the want of sympathy
in the free States with the efforts of slaveholders
for the recapture of fugitives from service. In all
the slave States there is a restiveness:resulting from
the resistance which has been so determinedly
made within the last few years, in the free States,
to the extension of slavery in the common terri-
tories of the United States. The Republican
party, which cast its votes for the successful
presidential candidate on the ground of that
policy, has been allowed, practically, no repre-
sentation, no utterance by oppeeh or through the
press, in the slave States, while its policy, prin-
ciples, and sentiments, and even its temper, have
been so misrepresented as to excite apprehen-
sions that it denies important constitutional
obligations, and aims even at interference with
slavery and its overthrow by State autho-
rities or intervention of the Federal Govern-
ment. Considerable masses even in the free States,
interested in the success of these misrepresentations
as a means of partisan strategy, have lent their
sympathy to the party claiming to be aggrieved.
On a complex issue between the Republican party
and the disunionists, although it involves the direst
national calamities, the result might be doubtful ;
for the Republican party is weak in a large part of
the Union. But on a direct issue, with all who
cherish the Union on one side, and all who desire
its dissolution by force on the other, the verdict
would be prompt and almost unanimous. I consi-
der the idea of the withdrawal of the Gulf States
and their permanent reorganization with or with-,
out others in a distinct Confederacy as a means of
advantage to themselves, so certainly unwise and
so obviously impossible of execution, when the
purpose is understood, that I dismiss it with the
discussion I have already incidentally bestowed
upon it. The case is different, however, in regard
to other subjects which I have brought in this con-
nexion before the Senate. Beyond a doubt, union
is vitally important to the Republican citizens of
the United States; but it is just as important to
the whole people. So far as the abstract question
whether, by the Constitution of the United States,
the bondsman, who is made such by the laws of a
State, is still a man or only property, I answer
that, within that State, its laws on that subject
are supreme; that when he has escaped from
that State into another, the Constitution regards
him as a bondsman who may not, by any law or
regulation of that State, be discharged from its
service, but shall be delivered up, on claim, to the
party to whom his service is due. While prudence
and justice would combine in persuading you
to modify the acts of Congress on that subject,
so as not to oblige private persons to assist in their
execution, and to protect freemen from being,
by the abuse of the laws, carried into
slavery, I agree that all laws of the States,
whether Free States or slave States, which relate
to this class of persons, or any others recently
coming from or resident in other States, and
whish laws contravene the Constitution of the
United States, or any law of Congress passed in con-
conformity thereto, ought to repealed. Experience
in public affairs has confirmed my opinion that
domestic slavery, existing in any State, is wisely
left by the Constitution of the United States ex-
clusively to the care, management, and disposition
of that State, and if it were in my power I would
not alter the Constitution in that respect. If mis-
apprehension of my position needs so strong a
remedy, I am willing to vote for an amendment of
the Constitution, declaring that it shall not, by any
future amendment, be so altered as to confer en
Congress a power to abolish or interfere with
slavery in any State. While I think that Congress
has exclusive and sovereign authority to legislate
on all subjects whatever in the common territories
of the United States, and while I certainly shall
never, directly or indirectly, give my vote to
establish or sanction slavery in such ter-
ritories, or anywhere else in the world
yet the question what constitutional laws
shall at any time be passed in regard to the
Territories is, like every other question, to be
determined on practical grounds. When the au gry
excitement of the hour shall have subsided, and
calmness once more shall have resumed its accus-
tomed sway over the public mind, then, and not
until then—one, two, or three years hence—l should
cheerfully advise a convention of the people to be
assembled in pursuance of the Constitution, to con-
sider and decide whether any, and what, amend-
ments of the organic national law ought to be made.
A Republican now—as I have heretofore been a
member of other parties existing in my day—l
nevertheless hold and cherish, as I have always
done, the principle that this Government exists in
its present form only by the consent of the governed.