New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-07-27

a ATATR IN PERIL.

A STATE IN PERIL.
When fever is at it's hight the anxious friends
of the patient look for some speedy indications Of
coming death or of conyaescence. The two forces
of disease and health are actively at work in the
body polite of our sister State of Texas, and the
other members of the family must need watch the
symptoms, now that crisis is reached, with
becoming solicitude.
The struggle in Texas is between Slavery and
FIeedom-Slayery that killeth, and Freedom that
maketh alive In the western part of the State
ia large body of citizens chiefly immigrants from
Germany who have sealed their devotion to liberty
by abandoning their own country and, in their new
homes maintain the dignity and the rights OF labor
by working with their own hands, and thus stamp
ing with their reprobation that system which robs
the aboring an of the fruits of his own toll. In
other sections of the State, the migrating slave
holders ever seeking virgin soil to be, in it's turn
bliphted by their footsteps, have settled with
their slaves. For years these two antagonls-
tic forces have been growing in strength,
in preparation for the cCming conflict
The struggle is between two classes of bonafde
settlers of new territory, governed by precisely
opposite principles and purposes. One seeks to
feu1 Commonwealth upon men; the other is de-
termined to perpetuate despotism resting upon
slaves. There is also this other wide difference
between them: while one asks only that they may
unmolested be permitted to work with their own
HANDS, TO think their own thoughts, and to give to
them free utterance leaving the result to the inev-
OF Of mind ha
other insists that all the institutions Of society shall
conform to the necessities of Slavery; that labor,
and thought and speech and legislation shall be
measured by the relation which a ragged, i'm
bIuted, half.starved negro bears to more brutal
white man, whose knowledge of the science OF
government is at the end of cart-whip, and whose
moral law is carried at his belt in bowieknife
and revolver. ..... ...
Where two such forces exist together, one must
have all the aggressive power of violent, malig-
nant disease the other the steady passive resist
ance belonging to healthy nature. That such is
the fact in Texas, the evidence is before us. The
telegraph brings us the intelligence of the burning
of the town of Dallas, followed by the disclosure Of
diabolical plot. ALI Northern Texas, it seems,
was to have been devastated; the country was to
have been laid waste by fires arms and ammuni-
ton were to have been destroyed, and when the
whole country was thus rendered utterly helpless,
a general insurrection was to follow. Such story
has its origin partly in malice and partly in coward
ice. Any unusual calamity in any slayeholdng com
munty is sure to foreshadow instruction to the
trembling masters, who are ever watching for
such manifestations of the love of liberty
and the love of revenge in their happy helots.
And they avail themselves, in this case, of
this natural and ever.present fear of
servile insurrection, to deepen the hatred of the
saveholding community against that portion of the
people of the State whose perniciOus example of
non slayehOdingis at rebuke of shareholders,
and an evidence that free labor, free men, and free
thought with all the blessings, and benefits, and
privileges, which they gather about them, are IN
nitey better than the benighted and semi civilized
condition which is the inevitable consequence of
the presence of slaves. To inure still more those
" no are thus stigmatzed incendaries, assassns,
and revoutiOnsts the charge isadded that they are
assisted by Northern AbolitiODists. This, which
proves the absurdity of the whole story, only reu
ders it the more appalling at the South When
john Brown was executed at Charestown, the
only man who in this country ever seriously be-
lieyed in instruction sealed his faith with his
blood.
1t is clear that the shareholders of Texas have,
or believe they have, reached that crisis of their
fate where nothing but active hostility to their OPP
pOnents within the State will save it. If the Anti
Slavery Germans of the West will not soon be
so numerous as to secure political supremacy in
the whole State, they will, ere long, be strong
enough to form new Free State by themselves.
This imminent danger is the secret spring not merely
of this terrible tale of devastation, insurrecon, and
murder, but of recent legislation in Texas. We
published, two or three days since its latest enact
ment on this subject. 1t pr, hibits anybody from
saying or reading, publicly or privately, anything
that shall bring Slavery " into disrepute," under
heavy penalties of fine and imprisonment. To up
hold the system by appeals to the ignorance,
the credulity, and the cowardice of the commu-
nifty, is device as old as Slavery itself; but the
institution must indeed be in danger, when ii is
found necessary to limit and prohibit conscientious
conviction and intellectual deduction 10 regard to
it, by penal enactments. LIP