Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1860-10-27
KALF A CENTURY AGO.


were current about fifty years since, respecting
a political measure of those times, the con-
sequences of which are being developed at the
present day. The purchase and annexation OF
Louisiana, though desirable in some respects,
was vet a policy of doubtful expediency; and
especially so if the accompanying evils, which
were clearly foresecn, should prove sufficient to
destroy our fitness and ability for free institu
tons. If by the annexation of incongruous
elements we shall be forced to change our free
form of government and adopt one of h more
stringent character, it is doubtful at least, If we
shall have gained enough in physical advantages
to compensate for the evil Nothing, not even
life ITSELF can compensate for a loss of liberty.
But that our liberties are endangered and that
our fathers clearly foresaw one of the sources
from which the danger was to come, peruoal of
the following article, taken from the Ne,c Lidmp-
shire Sentinel of October 20, 1901 will sufficient
ly show:
"a country has been purchased Louisiana
BY the President, Mr. Jefierson.] for fifteen
millions of dollars, of an immcasurable extent,
of which the most that is generally known is
learnt from the Presidents Minister at the
French Court, and the governor appointed by
the President to rule over this territory. The
former has officially announced that it can be
cultivated by sldres only, and the latter in Il
communication to the President, ldments that
the people are strangers to our ideas of Gov
eminent and unqualified to govern themselves.
We are told by others that the centre OF this
newly acquired world. is further from us than
some of the West India Islands, that some parts
are more distant than Europe, and that the fer
tility and natural advantages of the parts already
explored, invite a rapid population. The set
Elements now established are said to contain
motley race of all nations and languages, and
will afford an asylum to hordes of foreign fugi-
tives and vagabonds, whose emigration to our
country, is encouraged by the prevailing policy,
and who, by the rms of the cession, will he
entitled to the privileges of citizens of the Uni
ted States, and will become clamorous for adj
mission into the Union.
Thus we perceive that the Virginia policy has
entrenched itself behind the most formidable
rampars. States can be multiplied at her
pleasure with as much expedition as townships
are incorporated in New England and hocked
with voters more easily than we can flock our
farms with cattle. Does it not incontestibly re-
suit that these circumstances have a tendency to
deprive the northern states of all interest and
consideration in the National Government that
without some exertion, we shall be ingulphed
in vortex of politics and interests alien to
our own, and that the voices of our Represent
tatives will be drowned amid the discordant
jargon of French, Spanish, German and Irish
delegates, chosen by Stare o,rners in dispro-
portionate ratio, and compelled to submit their
own crude and monstrous conceptions OF politi-
cal subjects to the control of the wary and in
fpllippnt few who thpn
support by sacrifices to their prejudices and
passions?
In such state of things, to which we are
rapidly fastening what will become of the in
terests of New England? OF her commerce,
her Manufactures, her Fisheries the fruitful
source of that capital to which the farmer must
ascribe the increasing value of his land and of
the produce? Where shall we find the liberty
and independence for which we began the revo-
luton, or the federal equality which it was the
professed object of the present constitution to
secure?"
The injury to the material interests of New
England to result from the annexation, though
now being felt in her loss of representatives
and consequently of political power and in
fluence in the union, is of but little consequence
in comparison with that Dissertation of New
England principles and sentiments which is
nursed and fostered, in very barbarous wanton-
ness, in that South Western territory
The preponderance of New England, of her
free and liberal ideas and of her free labor,
has been counterbalanccd and destroyed by the
slave-growing policy OF the South. TO oppose
New England energy and counterfeit her in
stincts for liberty, new states have been an
nexed with express provisions for slavery.
Texas, although unsuited in much of her soil
and climate for the purpose of slave-institu-
tions, was brought into the Union with the ex-
press stipulation that she might, if she should
choose, add ten slave senators to the United
States Senate; and true to this old policy, even
at the present day. Governor Wise, despairng
of assistance at home, looks to Texas violence
for sympathy against the pressure of those
outraged feelings of Repubcanism which the
slave-policy has at length aroused and stirred
up. 1t is to the revolutionary violence of
the homogeneous elements of the South West
it is to State which expclls hundreds of her
best citizens for opinions sake, and eXpells them
too with circumstances of barbarity that would
have better suited Ferdinand of Spain or
Louis the Great of France than free state--it
is to such a source that Governor Wise, the in
carnation of the Southern slave policy, looks
for sympathy and support against the storm
like rush of free sentiments and liberal princ-
Piles that has at length come upon him from the
North.
The New England policy of free opinions and
free labor is about to gain the ascendency,
After her workshops have been comparatively
edserted and her fields abandoned, their oc-
cupants being driven out to the far west by a
low tariff in favor of slave labor, she seems on
the point, through her children in the West, of
regaining that ascendency which is due to her
enterprise, her intelligence and her principles.
But although the Slave policy may meet with
a check in the present contest for the presiden-
cy; the evils which it has entailed upon us are
yet to be feared. Slavery, as thus far fostered,
has cut ruinously like a two edged sword into the
vital noints of our free institutions While an