hazards of the Republican candidate.
To achieve so desirable an end, its leaders are ready to coalesce, here
with the Douglas, and there with the Breckinridge faction of that very
Democratic party of whose violations of the Constitution, corruption,
and dangerous limberness of principle they have been the lifelong
denouncers. In point of fact, then, it is perfectly plain that we have
only two parties in the field: those who favor the extension of
slavery, and those who oppose it,--in other words, a Destructive and a
Conservative party.

We know very well that the partisans of Mr. Bell, Mr. Douglas, and Mr.
Breckinridge all equally claim the title of conservative: and the fact
is a very curious one, well worthy the consideration of those foreign
critics who argue that the inevitable tendency of democracy is to
compel larger and larger concessions to a certain assumed communistic
propensity and hostility to the rights of property on the part of the
working classes. But the truth is, that revolutionary ideas are
promoted, not by any unthinking hostility to the _rights_ of property,
but by a well-founded jealousy of its usurpations; and it is Privilege,
and not Property, that is perplexed with fear of change. The
conservative effect of ownership operates with as much force on the man
with a hundred dollars in an old stocking as on his neighbor with a
million in the funds. During the Roman Revolution of '48, the beggars
who had funded their gains were among the stanchest reactionaries, and
left Rome with the nobility. No question of the abstract right of
property has ever entered directly into our politics, or ever
will,--the point at issue being, whether a certain exceptional kind of
property, already privileged beyond all others, shall be entitled to
still further privileges at the expense of every other kind. The
extension of slavery over new territory means just this,--that this one
kind of property, not recognized as such by the Constitution, or it
would never have been allowed to enter into the basis of
representation, shall control the foreign and domestic policy of the
Republic.

A great deal is said, to be sure, about the rights of the South; but
has any such right been infringed? When a man invests money in any
species of property, he assumes the risks to which it is liable. If he
buy a house, it may be burned; if a ship, it may be wrecked; if a horse
or an ox, it may die. Now the disadvantage of the Southern ki