Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1860-07-23
lProm the New York Post.1
The Slavery Question to be Put Out
OF Politics, and How.

There is a calm assurance in an Amcri-
ates, which can be parallcled in no Other
country. OF American demagogucs the
most distinguished of his class in these
particulars, the man who is most indiffer-
cnt about what he says if he can make it
serve his immediate purposes, and the
man who presnmes most upon the ignor-
ance and thoughtlessness of the great
mass OF society, is Stephen y. Douglas, at
this present speaking, stumping New Eng
land for the Presidency.
We may add, farther, that one of the
most remarkable displays of his superla-
tive assurance and presumption may be
found in the speech he delivered in Bos-
ton on Tuesday night, in the course of
which he said:
tOr years the slavery question has excluded other
matters OF national Importance from Congress. If
you ask your repre- entativcs why measures were not
taken to increase the revenue instead authorizing
loan, the response is that there was no time to do
lt-no time to pay Your honest debts. If You ask
why there Is no Pacific railroad, why there is no
overland mail route, and mail steamers, you are
Iolu that no time to attendto these matters
Inc slavery question occupied all of the time Thus
the commercial, shipping, agricultural, and manufuc
turing interest are neglected for want of time be-
cause Oh me slavery question There never will be
time, unless you Danish the slavery question from
inc nails o. Congress and refer back to the people
according to the platform of the democratic party
Ut course the speaker must have as
sumed that his hearers and readers had
forgotten that he had been for ten wears
and more the most active minister to sla-
very agitation in Congress; that he con-
trIVed and negotiated the plan for the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and
that he was one of the very first to take
what he deemed the short cut to the Pres
ldency, showing that in devotion and SER
Witty to the slavery insterest he stood,
ike Saul in Israel, II head and shoulders
above all his countrymen. lie must have
assumed that this was all forgotten. or
never known, or if known and remember
ed, that very few of the New England peo-
pie really felt what they professsed to feel
IN regard to it, and that it was merely an
accident that Massachusetts sent a man of
Charles Summers political opinions to the
United States Senate, instend of one who
would stand quietly by and see another
senator like Charles Sumner beaten over
the head and nearly killed by n rullian,
while dIschargtng his official duty.
:, But though it is the psychological pecu-
t'aSity OF demAgogues to suppose every
body as different in matters of Drinci-
pie as they are themselves, and great
zeal less Intelligent, their actions are not
on that account less worthy of being
watched. nor their utterance of beinS
studied. Their instincts for the detection
OF change in the currents of public opin
ION are wonderfully acute, and in that
point of view this speech of Douglas is
significant. He has discovered that the
negro strain which he and his partisans
nave been playing SO long is no longer a
"dulsom melody" ut least in the northern
states, and that the slavery question must
DC put out of politics. In this he is un-
uouotedly correct. And so it will be. but
not by him or such as he. So long rs the
slaveholding interest can make or mar tho |
fortunes of politician; so long as its
alliance is deemed essential to every man |
VINO aspires to a political career. so long
as the slavery agitation will be the most |
prominent feature of American politics.-
Every asplrant for federal honors will do
Just as Pierce and Douglas and Buchanan
dld, contrive some scheme by which to
prove, each, that his devotion to slavery
surpasses that of his competitors. Allthe
slavery agitation in the country, since the
annexatlo" of Texas, has had lust this
origin and no other. But for the STRUGGLES
of men like Pierce, Douglas and Buchan-
an, and such as they, to do sometime 70
upon themselves the support
Of the pro-slaVery power in the country
winch has always moved as n unit, and by
ITS unity held the balance of power in the
nation, none of the slavery issues which
have made so much bad blood, in the |.
country during the past ten years, could
nave become primary questions. They I
you'd have dragged along like the Pacific
railroad or the tariff question, and finally
laVe received such disposition as would