sider the evidence closed for the present on
this count of the indictment.

In the face of these predictions, these declarations, this line of
fracture, this precise statement, testimony from so many sources,
extending through several generations, as to the necessary effect of
slavery, a priori, and its actual influence as shown by the facts, few
will suppose that anything we could have done would have stayed its
course or prevented it from working out its legitimate effects on the
white subjects of its corrupting dominion. Northern acquiescence or even
sympathy may have sometimes helped to make it sit more easily on the
consciences of its supporters. Many profess to think that Northern
fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a mordant in fixing the
black dye of slavery in regions which would but for that have washed
themselves free of its stain in tears of penitence. It is a delusion
and a snare to trust in any such false and flimsy reasons where there is
enough and more than enough in the institution itself to account for its
growth. Slavery gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money,
and the love of ease; it finds a victim for anger who cannot smite back
his oppressor; and it offers to all, without measure, the seductive
privileges which the Mormon gospel reserves for the true believers on
earth, and the Bible of Mahomet only dares promise to the saints in
heaven.

Still it is common, common even to vulgarism, to hear the remark that
the same gallows-tree ought to bear as its fruit the arch-traitor and
the leading champion of aggressive liberty. The mob of Jerusalem was not
satisfied with its two crucified thieves; it must have a cross also for
the reforming Galilean, who interfered so rudely with its conservative
traditions! It is asserted that the fault was quite as much on our side
as on the other; that our agitators and abolishers kindled the flame for
which the combustibles were all ready on the other side of the border.
If these men could have been silenced, our brothers had not died.

Who are the persons that use this argument? They are the very ones who
are at the present moment most zealous in maintaining the right of free
discussion. At a time when every power the nation can summon is needed
to ward off the blows aimed at its life, and turn their force upon its
foes,--when a false traitor at home may lose us a battle by a word,
and a lying newspaper may demoralize an army by its daily or weekl