in the country to test the sad experiment. When that evil day shall come, and all further effort at resistance shall be impossible, then, if there be no better hope of redemption than I can now foresee, I shall say with 5 Franklin, while looking abroad over the whole earth for a new and more congenial home, "Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

You will tell me that these fears are extravagant and chimerical. I answer, they are so; but they are so only 10 because the designs of the slave-holders must and can be defeated. But it is only the possibility of defeat that renders them so. They cannot be defeated by inactivity. There is no escape from them compatible with nonresistance. How, then, and in what way, shall the 15 necessary resistance be made? There is only one way. The Democratic party must be permanently dislodged from the government. The reason is, that the Democratic party is inextricably committed to the designs of the slave-holders, which I have described. Let me be 20 well understood. I do not charge that the Democratic candidates for public office now before the people are pledged to much less that the Democratic masses who support them really adopt those atrocious and dangerous designs. Candidates may, and generally do, mean 25 to act justly, wisely, and patriotically when they shall be elected; but they become the ministers and servants, not the dictators, of the power which elects them. . . . It is not more true that "hell is paved with good intentions," than it is that earth is covered with wrecks 30 resulting from innocent and amiable motives.

The very constitution of the Democratic party commits it to execute all the designs of the slave-holders, whatever they may be. It is not a party of the whole Union-of all the free States and of all the slave States; nor yet is 35 it a party of the free States in the North and in the

North-West; but it is a sectional and local party, having practically its seat within the slave States, and counting its constituency chiefly and almost exclusively there. Of all its representatives in Congress and in the electoral colleges, two-thirds uniformly come from these States. 5 Its great element of strength lies in the vote of the slave-holders, augmented by the representation of threefifths of the slaves. Deprive the Democratic party of this strength, and it would be a helpless and hopeless minority, incapable of continued organization. The Dem- 10 ocratic party, being thus local and sectional, acquires new strength from the admission of every new slave State, and loses relatively by the admission of every new free State into the Union.

A party is in one sense a joint stock association, in 15 which those who contribute most direct the action and management of the concern. The slave-holders contributing in an overwhelming proportion to the capital strength of the Democratic party, they necessarily dictate and prescribe its policy. The inevitable caucus system enables 20 them to do so with a show of fairness and justice. If it were possible to conceive for a moment that the Democratic party should disobey the behests of the slave-holders, we should then see a withdrawal of the slave-holders, which would leave the party to perish. The portion of the 25 party which is found in the free States is a mere appendage, convenient to modify its sectional character without impairing its sectional constitution, and is less effective in regulating its movement than the nebulous tail of the comet is in determining the appointed, though apparently 30 eccentric, course of the fiery sphere from which it em

anates.

To expect the Democratic party to resist slavery and favor freedom, is as unreasonable as to look for Protestant missionaries to the Catholic Propaganda of Rome. 35

The history of the Democratic party commits it to the policy of slavery. It has been the Democratic party and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its present alarming culmination. Without stopping to 5 ascertain critically the origin of the present Democratic party, we may concede its claim to date from the era of good feeling which occurred under the administration of President Monroe. At that time, in this State, and about that time in many others of the free States, the 10 Democratic party deliberately disfranchised the free colored or African citizen, and it has pertinaciously continued this disfranchisement ever since. This was an effective aid to slavery; for, while the slave-holder votes for his slaves against freedom, the freed slave in the free States 15 is prohibited from voting against slavery. . . .

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[Here follows a review of measures carried or attempted by the Democratic party, from 1824 up to the date of this speech, to show the singleness of the devotion of that party to the support of slavery. The passage closes as follows: -]

The Democratic party, finally, has procured from a supreme judiciary, fixed in its interest, a decree that slavery exists by force of the Constitution in every territory of the United States, paramount to all legislative authority either within the territory or residing in 25 Congress.

Such is the Democratic party. It has no policy, state or federal, for finance, or trade, or manufacture, or commerce, or education, or internal improvements, or for the protection or even the security of civil or religious lib30 erty. It is positive and uncompromising in the interest of slavery, -negative, compromising, and vacillating, in regard to everything else. It boasts its love of equality; and wastes its strength, and even its life, in fortifying the only aristocracy known in the land. It professes

fraternity; and, so often as slavery requires, allies itself with proscription. It magnifies itself for conquests in foreign lands; but it sends the national eagle forth always with chains, and not the olive branch, in his fangs.

This dark record shows you, fellow citizens, what I 5 was unwilling to announce at an earlier stage of this argument, that of the whole nefarious schedule of slaveholding designs which I have submitted to you, the Democratic party has left only one yet to be consummated — the abrogation of the law which forbids the African slave- 10 trade.

I think, fellow citizens, that I have shown you that it is high time for the friends of freedom to rush to the rescue of the Constitution, and that their very first duty is to dismiss the Democratic party from the administra- 15 tion of government. Why shall it not be done?

I know few, I think, know better than I— the resources and energies of the Democratic party, which is identical with the slave power. I do ample justice to its traditional popularity. I know, further — 20 few, I think, know better than I the difficulties and disadvantages of organizing a new political force, like the Republican party, and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring without prestige and without patronage. But, understanding all this, I know that the 25 Democratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must rise into its place. The Democratic party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as it practised this principle faithfully, it was in- 30 vulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has maintained itself, not by virtue of its own strength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there as yet had appeared in the political field no other party that had 35

the conscience and the courage to take up, and avow, and practise the life-inspiring principle which the Democratic party had surrendered. At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows, now, as the Republican party 5 of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works, “Equal and exact justice to all men." Even when it first entered the field, only half organized, it struck a blow which only just failed to secure complete and triumphant victory. In this, its second campaign, it has already 10 won advantages which render that triumph now both easy and certain.

The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the 15 fact that it is a party of one idea; but that idea is a noble one an idea that fills and expands all generous souls; the idea of equality-the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before the divine tribunal and divine laws.

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I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty Senators and a hundred Representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opinions and principles of freedom which hardly so 25 many men, even in this free State, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the Government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery, the people of the United 30 States have been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together the forces with which to recover back again all the fields and all the castles which have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the constitution and freedom 35 forever.