hat the inhabitants of one-half the territory
are wholly free, and those of the other half divided into masters and
slaves, deep if not irreconcilable collisions of interest must abound.
The question whether such a community can exist under one common
government, is a subject of profound, philosophical speculation in
theory. Whether it can continue long to exist, is a question to be
solved only by the experiment now making by the people of this Union,
under that national compact, the constitution of the United States."

The admission of Missouri into the Union is another clear illustration
of the slaveholding power. That contest was marked by the same violence,
and the same threats, as have characterized nullification. On both
occasions the planters were pitted against the commercial and
manufacturing sections of the country. On both occasions the democracy
of the North was, by one means or another, induced to throw its strength
upon the Southern _lever_, to increase its already prodigious power.
On both, and on all occasions, some little support has been given to
Northern principles in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina; because
in portions of those States there is a considerable commercial interest,
and some encouragement of free labor. So true it is, in the minutest
details, that slavery and freedom are always arrayed in opposition to
each other.

At the time of the Missouri question, the pestiferous effects of slavery
had become too obvious to escape the observation of the most superficial
statesman. The new free States admitted into the Union enjoyed tenfold
prosperity compared with the new slave States. Give a free laborer a
barren rock, and he will soon cover it with vegetation; while the slave
and his task-master, would change the garden of Eden to a desert.

But Missouri must be admitted as a slave State, for two strong reasons.
First, that the planters might perpetuate their predominant influence
by adding to the slave representation,--the power of which is always
concentrated against the interests of the free States. Second, that a
new market might be opened for their surplus slaves. It is lamentable
to think that two votes in favor of Missouri slavery, were given by
Massachusetts men; and that those two votes would have turned the scale.
The planters loudly threatened to dissolve the Union, if slavery were
not extended beyond the Mississippi. If the Union cannot be preserved
without crime, it is an ete