Year: 1863




cordiug to any abstract theory of pure atural
rights There is no form of political organization
in which abatcments are not made from such rights,
as metaphysically couceiv in the domain Of social
speculation These M taphysical rights entering


into life, are, Burke phrases it, rcfracted
ike rays Of light which pierce into d~nse me-
dunn from the straight line Of ideal regularity.
The pretended "right,' of these theorists are
adds the great British statesman, all extremes Of
though, and in pr portion they nctaphys
caly true, they are morally and politically false.
The rights Of men, modified by society and by
the political conventions which antedate all social
arrange mcnts, are sort of resulting from
compromise sometimes between the best attainable
good and the least necessary of evils, while some
times, such is the infrmity of human nature that
the choice las to be made between greater and less
degrees Of evil


In our country we have long had two political
schools, which, in different lines Of direction have
illustrated the spirit and tendencies of speculative
rather than practical politics On the one hand,
the disciples cf Mr.. Calhoun, growing more and
more disatfected towards the arrangements of the
National Constitution which bind Slaveholding and
nous Slaveholding States in Federal Union, have
sighed for Republic founded on a community of
social Institutes recognising natural and unchange
able inequality Of races with pre-establish-
ed harmony resulting from the mastership Of
the one race and the subordination of the other.
On the other hand, the theorists who demand
that the arrangements of the State shall be ordered
according to speculative notions of natural rights,
growing equally disaffected towards system which
recognises and tolerates the existence of a social
evil such as slavery, have sought to reform our poll
ty according to their abstract conceptions of JUS
tice, without due regard to the established demar-
cations of political power within which alone they
had the power lawfully to act To these reformers
the evil of slavery has appeared the one anomaly
which more than aught else deserved to be extir-
pated at every hazard and at whatever cost. 1t
was not enough to have universal freedom as the
aspiration and ultimate geal of all men embraced
in the figure of American society, but this great
consummation must be reached per sditlm, and
without regard to those historic laws of reform
which mark the workings of Divine Providence in
the gradual elevation of races.


We have been reminded Of these two schools OF
political thinkers and of the practical likeness
which exists between them, while their paths are
so divergent, by some remarks which the present
Postmaster General, the hon Montgomery Blair,
recently offered at Concord, in the State Of New
Hampshire He said:


There are two knots Of conspriog politicians oppo
site ends Of the Union that make slavery ucrum


l,la than n.,ya
willingly break it in the middle and demolish it to make
experiments with the fractions in rec0nstrctons suited
to their designs which only known as hostile to ihe
we'll balanced Constitutions inherited by fathers. The
Calhoun and Wendell Phillips Juntos have both sought the
mpishmen Of their adverse ends by common
the overthrow Of the Constitution Calhouus school would
destroy every free principle because repugnant TO the
perpetuy aud propagation Of slavery universally the
only safe foundation of good school
would subject all our systems OF government to the guo


tine Of revolutionary tribunals because they recognise the
existence OF different among OF white red, and
black because they repudste the idea OF equality and


fraternity in regard to citizenship that tends TO produce
that amalgamatiOn, personal and political, which would
make Government of mongre and because
they authorize legislation, State and National which may
exclude them from taking root in the soil and Government
of the country The white has excluded the Indian
from dominion this continent its native eborn orr
gna inheritor the African introduced on it, not
its to give it law but to be owned and receive
law and under this aspect the white man, conque-
accommodated the constitutions Of the country to
his own con1tion-that of the ruling The ground
which Wendell Phillips and his followers take not mere
B to alter the law and enranchse the held under it
as inferior to that holding the dominion by right Of
quest but abolish the constitutions which recognise that


right established and admit to equal participation those
races hitherto excluded ss interiors.


After remarking that the Free States Of the
North exclude the manumitted slaves from their
soil, avowing the abhorrent feeling of caste as
nsuperable bar to the association on any terms,
much less of equality, Mr.. Blair asks how it can
be expected that the people Of the Southern States
will acquesce in arrangements which proceed on
the assumption that this excommunicated race,
surrendered by them slaves, should be retained,
nevertheless, among them, aud admitted equals
and as partners in political power, in defiance Of
the Constitution of the United States, and the laws
even Of the Northern Sta,es which brand them
with the badge of inferority and political disabili
y? He adds:


Would not the inextingulshabe memory of wrongs
one side and Of admitted mastery the other make
tent acquescence either side impossible All the
bloodest revolutions Of ancient and modern times have
been those broached by slaves against enslsvers Our
civil war closing in the manumssion Of four million Of
slaves to take equal rank with six million Of ensavers,
would be but the prelude to servile of extermina
ton The advocates of this hybrid policy know this but
they think negro essential to the selfish purposes Of
10 make him, well those who hold him ia durance,
of adj nta