t they bring no
sustenance to the perishing slave. The blood of souls is upon her
garments, yet she heeds not the stain. The clanking of the prisoner's
chains strike upon her ear, but they cannot penetrate her heart."

Then, with holy wrath upon the nation, thus:

"Every Fourth of July our Declaration of Independence is produced, with
a sublime indignation, to set forth the tyranny of the mother country,
and to challenge the admiration of the world. But what a pitiful detail
of grievances does this document present, in comparison with the wrongs
which our slaves endure? In the one case it is hardly the plucking of a
hair from the head; in the other, it is the crushing of a live body on
the wheel--the stings of the wasp contrasted with the tortures of the
Inquisition. Before God I must say that such a glaring contradiction as
exists between our creed and practice the annals of six thousand years
cannot parallel. In view of it I am ashamed of my country. I am sick of
our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our
hypocritical cant about the inalienable rights of man. I would not for
my right hand stand up before a European assembly, and exult that I am
an American citizen, and denounce the usurpations of a kingly government
as wicked and unjust; or, should I make the attempt, the recollection of
my country's barbarity and despotism would blister my lips, and cover my
cheeks with burning blushes of shame."

Passing to his second proposition, which affirmed the right of the free
States to be in at the death of slavery, he pointed out that slavery was
not sectional but national in its influence. If the consequences of
slave-holding did not flow beyond the limits of the slave section, the
right would still exist, on the principle that what affected injuriously
one part must ultimately hurt the whole body politic. But it was not
true that slavery concerned only the States where it existed--the parts
where it did not exist were involved by their constitutional liability
to be called on for aid in case of a slave insurrection, as they were in
the slave representation clause of the national compact, through which
the North was deprived of its "just influence in the councils of the
nation." And, furthermore, the right of the free States to agitate the
question inhered in the principle of majority rule--the white population
of the free States being almost double that of the slave States, "and
the voice of thi