subjects of daily curiosity and daily con- belief in human virtue; and the conditions versation? How many patrician-or, at we have named are found to be fatal to the all events, noble-dames regular attend- virtue of the poorer Frenchwomen. And ants at mass, arbiters of fashion, and orna- as for the men, what must be the effect on ments of the Church, honour with their in- them? Debarred from the stirring conflict quisitiveness, women of whose existence, of politics; exiled, so to speak, from the twenty years ago, no decent Frenchwoman natural arena of patriotic ambition; knowwas presumed to have any knowledge? ing no literature save that of novels in And do these noble ladies suppose that this which courtezans are the heroines, and curiosity is disregarded by the adventur- caring for no society but that of which esses from Arles or Strasburg, Bordeaux or courtezans are the leaders; diversifying the Rouen, whom successful prostitution has excitement of the hazard-table and the dowered with lace, diamonds, carriages, betting-room with the excitement of the and opera-boxes? Do they suppose that coulisses; learning from their habitual assothe professed admiration of the young ciations to lose that reverence for women Sardanapali for the ex-couturières and bal- and that courteous attention to them which let-girls of Paris has not a more potent ef- are popularly supposed to have at one time fect when combined with the ill-concealed characterized the gentlemen of France interest of their mothers and sisters? And they partially redeem the degradation, which what that effect is on the men in one class, they court by showing that even a raixture and on the women in another, a very slight of vapid frivolity, sensual indulgence, and knowledge of human nature is sufficient to senseless extravagance is insufficient to corsuggest. That girls of moderately good looks rupt a nation, unless also the female leaders will contentedly continue to ply the shuttle of society conspire to select for their notice at Lyons, or to drudge as household servants and admiration those creatures for whom in Brittany, or to trudge home to a supperless the law of the land would better have prochamber in Paris with the bare earnings of vided the supervision of the police and a supernumerary or a coryphée at a small the certificate of professional prostitution. theatre, when a mere sacrifice of chastity When virtuous women of birth and position may enable them not only to ruin young rub shoulders with strumpets, protests are dukes and counts, but to become the theme useless and prophecies are superfluous; for and admiration of duchesses and countesses, the taint which goes before destruction is is a supposition which involves too high a already poisoning the heart of the nation.

in her inmost nature, she disenthralled religion from bondage to temporal power, that her worship might be worship only in spirit and in truth. The wisdom which had passed from India through Greece, with what Greece had added of her own; the jurisprudence of Rome; the medieval municipalities; the Teutonic method of representation; the political experience of England; the benignant wisdom of the expositors of the law of nature and of nations in France and Holland, all shed on her their selectest influence. She washed the gold of political wisdom from the sands whereever it was found; she cleft it from the rocks; she gleaned it among ruins. Out of all the discoveries of statesmen and sages, out of all the experience of past human life, she compiled a perennial political philosophy, the primordinal principles of national ethics. The wise men of Europe sought the best government in a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; and America went behind these names to extract from them the vital elements of social forms, and blend them harmoniously in the free Commonwealth, which comes nearest to the illustration of the natural equality of all men. She intrusted the guardianship of established rights to law; the movements of reform to the spirit of the people, and drew her force from the happy reconciliation of both. TERRITORIAL EXTENT OF THE REPulic.

THAT God rules in the affairs of men is as certain as any truth of physical science. On the great moving power which is from the beginning hangs the world of the senses and the world of thought and action. Eternal wisdom marshals the great procession of the nations, working in patient continuity through the ages, never halting, and never abrupt, encompassing all events in its oversight, and ever affecting its will, though mortals may slumber in apathy or oppose with madness. Kings are lifted up or thrown down, nations come and go, republics flourish and wither, dynasties pass away like a tale that is told; but nothing is by chance, though men in their ignorance of causes may think so. The deeds of time are governed as well as judged, by the decrees of eternity. The caprice of fleeting existences bends to the immovable omnipotence which plants its foot on all the centuries, and has neither change of purposes nor repose. Sometimes like a messenger through the thick darkness Republics had heretofore been limited to of night, it steps along mysterious ways; but small cantons or cities and their dependenwhen the hour strikes for a people, or for cies; America, doing that of which the like mankind, to pass into a new form of being, had not before been known upon the earth, unseen hands draw the bolts from the gates or believed by kings and statesmen to be of futurity; an all-subduing influence pre-possible, extended her republic across a pares the mind of men for the coming revo- continent. Under her auspices the vine of lution; those who plan resistance find them- liberty took deep root and filled the land; selves in conflict with the will of Provi- the hills were covered with its shadow; its dence, rather than with human devices; boughs were like the goodly cedars, and and all hearts and all understandings, most reached unto both oceans. The fame of of all the opinions and influences of the this only daughter of freedom went out unwilling, are wonderfully attracted and into all the lands of the earth; from her compelled to bear forward the change which the human race drew hope. becomes more an obedience to the law of universal nature than submission to the arbitrament of man.

GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.

In the fulness of time a republic rose up in the wilderness of America. Thousands of years had passed away before this child of the ages could be born. From whatever there was of good in the systems of former centuries she drew her nourishment: the wrecks of the past were her warnings. With the deepest sentiment of faith fixed

PROPHECIES ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF

SLAVERY.

Neither hereditary monarchy nor hereditary aristocracy planted itself on our soil; the only hereditary condition that fastened itself upon us was servitude. Nature works in sincerity, and is ever true to its law. The bee hives honey, the viper distils poison; the vine stores its juices, and so do the poppy and the upas. In like manner, every thought and every action ripens its seed, each in its kind. In the individual man,

DESPAIR OF THE MEN OF THE REVO-
LUTION.

and still more in a nation, a just idea gives | position of Virginia and the South that the life, and progress, and glory; a false con- clause of Jefferson was restored, and the ception portends disaster, shame, and death. whole Northwestern Territory - all the A hundred and twenty years ago, a West territory that then belonged to the nation Jersey Quaker wrote: "this trade of im- was reserved for the labor of freemen. porting slaves is dark gloominess hanging over the land; the consequences will be grievous to posterity." At the North the growth of slavery was arrested by natural The hope prevailed in Virginia that the causes; in the region nearest the tropics it abolition of the slave trade would bring throve rankly, and worked itself into the with it the gradual abolition of slavery; but organism of the rising States. Virginia the expectation was doomed to disappointstood between the two; with soil, and cli- ment. In supporting incipient measures mate, resources demanding free labour, for emancipation, Jefferson encountered and yet capable of the profitable employ- difficulties greater than he could overcome; ment of the slave. She was the land of and after vain wrestlings, the words that great statesmen; and they saw the danger broke from him, "I tremble for my counof her being whelmed under the rising flood try, when I reflect that God is just, that his in time to struggle against the delusions of justice cannot sleep forever," were words avarice and pride. Ninety-four years ago, of despair. It was the desire of Washingthe Legislature of Virginia addressed the ton's heart that Virginia should remove British king, saying that the trade in slaves slavery by a public act; and as the proswas" of great inhumanity," was opposed to pect of a general emancipation grew more the "security and happiness" of their con- and more dim he, in utter hopelessness of stituents, "would in time have the most the action of the State, did all that he could destructive influence," and " endanger their by bequeathing freedom to his own slaves. very existence." And the king answered Good and true men had, from the days of them, that " upon pain of his highest dis- 1776, thought of colonizing the negro in pleasure, the importation of slaves should the home of his ancestors. But the idea of not be in any respect obstructed. "Phar-colonization was thought to increase the difisaical Britain," wrote Franklin in behalf of Virginia, "to pride thyself in setting free a single slave that happened to land on thy coasts, while thy laws continue a traffic whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that is entailed on their posterity." "A serious view of this subject," said Patrick Henry in 1773, "gives a gloomy prospect to future times." In the same year George Mason wrote to the Legislature of Virginia: "The laws of impartial Providence may avenge our injustice upon our posterity." In Virginia, and in the Continental Congress, Jefferson, with the approval of Edmund Pendleton, branded the slave trade as piracy; and he fixed in the Declaration of Independence as the corner stone of America: "All men are created equal, with an unalienable right to liberty." On the first organization of temporary governments for the continental domain Jefferson, but for the default of New The men of the Revolution passed away. Jersey, would, in 1784, have consecrated A new generation sprang up, impatient that every part of that territory to freedom. In an institution to which they clung should be the formation of the National Constitution condemned as inhuman, unwise and unjust; Virginia, opposed by a part of New Eng- in the throes of discontent at the self-reland vainly struggled to abolish the slave proach of their fathers, and blinded by the trade at once and forever; and when the lustre of wealth to be acquired by the culordinance of 1787 was introduced by Na- ture of a new staple, they devised the theothan Dane, without the clause prohibiting ry that slavery, which they would not abolslavery, it was through the favourable dis- | ish, was not evil, but good. They turned

ficulty of emancipation; and in spite of
strong support, while it accomplished much
good for Africa, it proved impracticable as
a remedy at home. Madison, who in early
life disliked slavery so much that he wished
"to depend as little as possible on the labor
of slaves;" Madison, who held that where
slavery exists "the republican theory be-
comes fallacious;" Madison, who in the
last years of his life would not consent to
the annexation of Texas, lest his country-
men should fill it with slaves; Madison, who
said, "slavery is the greatest evil under
which the nation labors, a portentous evil,
an evil - moral, political and economical-
a sad blot on our free country," went mourn-
fully into old age with the cheerless words:
"No satisfactory plan has yet been devised
for taking out the stain."

NEW VIEWS OF SLAVERY.

SLAVERY AND FOREIGN RELATIONS.

The new theory hung as a bias on the foreign relations of the country; there could be no recognition of Hayti, nor even the American colony of Liberia; and the world was given to understand that the establishment of free labor in Cuba would be a reason for

ries were annexed; Louisiana, Florida, Texas, half of Mexico; slavery must have its share in them all, and it accepted for a time a dividing line between the unquestioned domain of free labor and that in which involuntary labor was to be tolerated. A few years passed away, and the new school, strong and arrogant, demanded and recived an apology for applying the Jefferson proviso to Oregon.

on the friends of colonization, and confidently demanded, "Why take black men from a civilized and Christian country, where their labor is a source of immense gain and a power to control the markets of the world, and send them to a land of ignorance, idolatry, and indolence, which was the home of their forefathers, but not theirs? Slav-wresting that island from Spain. Territoery is a blessing. Were they not in their ancestral land naked, scarcely lifted above brutes, ignorant of the course of the sun, controlled by nature? And in their new abode, have they not been taught to know the difference of the seasons, to plough, to plant and reap, to drive oxen, to tame the horse, to exchange their scanty dialect for the richest of all the languages among men, and the stupid adoration of follies for the purest religion? And since slavery is good for the blacks, it is good for their masters, bringing opulence and the opportunity of educating a race. The slavery of the black is good in itself; he shall serve the white man forever." And nature, which better understood the quality of fleeting interest and passion, laughed, as it caught the echo: "man and "forever!"

SLAVERY AT HOME.

A regular development of pretensions followed the new declaration with logical consistency. Under the old declaration every one of the States had retained, each for itself, the right of manumitting all slaves by an ordinary act of legislation; now, the power of the people over servitude through their legislatures was curtailed, and the privileged class was swift in imposing legal and constitutional obstruction, on the people themselves. The power of emancipation was narrowed or taken away. The slave might not be disquieted by education. There remained an unconfessed consciousness that the system of bondage was wrong, and a restless memory that it was at variance with the true American tradition, its safety was therefore to be secured by political organization. The generation that made the Constitution took care for the predominance of freedom in Congress, by the ordinance of Jefferson; the new school aspired to secure for slavery an equality of votes in the Senate; and while it hinted at an organic act that should concede to the collective South a veto power on national legislation, it assumed that each State separately had the right to revise and nullify laws of the United States, according to the discretion of its judgment.

SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY.

The application of that proviso was interrupted for three administrations; but justice moved steadily onward. In the news that the men of California had chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell of parting slavery; and on his deathbed he counselled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison, had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His system rushed irresistibly to its natural development. The death struggle for California was followed by a short truce; but the new school of politicians who said that slavery was not evil, but good, soon sought to recover the ground they had lost, and confident of securing Texas, they demanded that the established line in the territories between freedom and slavery should be blotted out. The country, believing in the strength and enterprise and expansive energy of freedom, made answer, though reluctantly: "Be it so; let there be no strife between brethren; let freedom and slavery compete for the territories on equal terms, in a fair field under an impartial administration;" and on this theory, if on any, the contest might have been left to the decision of time.

DRED SCOTT DECISION.

The South started back in appallment from its victory; for it knew that a fair competition foreboded its defeat. But where could it now find an ally to save it from its own mistake? What I have next to say is spoken with no emotion but regret. Ŏur meeting to-day is, as it were, at the grave, in the presence of Eternity, and the truth must be uttered in soberness and sincerity,