ses of
society, forming part of all our contracts within our own country and
in Europe. I should have been glad, sir, to have been spared the
hearing of a declaration of this kind, especially from the high source
and the place from which it emanated. But the assertion has gone forth
that we have twelve hundred millions of slave property at the South;
and can any man so close his understanding here as not plainly to
perceive that the power of this vast amount of property at the South
is now uniting itself to the banking power of the North, in order to
govern the destinies of this country. Six hundred millions of banking
capital is to be brought into this coalition, and the slave power and
the bank power are thus to unite in order to break down the present
administration. There can be no mistake, as I believe, in this matter.
The aristocracy of the North, who, by the power of a corrupt banking
system, and the aristocracy of the South, by the power of the slave
system, both fattening upon the labor of others, are now about to
unite in order to make the reign of each perpetual. Is there an
independent American to be found, who will become the recreant slave
to such an unholy combination? Is this another compromise to barter
the liberties of the country for personal aggrandisement? "Resistance
to tyrants is obedience to God."

The Senator further insists, "that what the law makes property is
property." This is the predicate of the gentleman; he has neither
facts nor reason to prove it; yet upon this alone does he rest the
whole case that negroes are property. I deny the predicate and the
argument. Suppose the Legislature of the Senator's own State should
pass a law declaring his wife, his children, his friends, indeed, any
white citizen of Kentucky, _property_, and should they be sold and
transferred as such, would the gentleman fold his arms and say, "Yes,
they are property, for the law has made them such?" No, sir; he would
denounce such law with more vehemence than he now denounces
abolitionists, and would deny the authority of human legislation to
accomplish an object so clearly beyond its power.

Human laws, I contend, cannot make human beings property, if human
force can do it. If it is competent for our legislatures to make a
black man _property_, it is competent for them to make a white man the
same; and the same objection exists to the power of the people in an
organic law for their own government; they cannot mak