ut unless the thinking result in a definite
opinion, and the opinion lead to considerate action, they are nothing.
If the people are assumed to be incapable of forming a judgment for
themselves, the men whose position enables them to guide the public
mind ought certainly to make good their want of intelligence. But on
this great question, the wise solution of which, we are every day
assured, is essential to the permanence of the Union, Mr. Bell has no
opinion at all, Mr. Douglas says it is of no consequence which opinion
prevails, and Mr. Breckinridge tells us vaguely that "all sections
have an equal right in the common Territories." The parties which
support these candidates, however, all agree in affirming that the
election of its special favorite is the one thing that can give back
peace to the distracted country. The distracted country will continue
to take care of itself, as it has done hitherto, and the only question
that needs an answer is, What policy will secure the most prosperous
future to the helpless Territories, which our decision is to make or
mar for all coming time? What will save the country from a Senate and
Supreme Court where freedom shall be forever at a disadvantage?

There is always a fallacy in the argument of the opponents of the
Republican party. They affirm that all the States and all the citizens
of the States ought to have equal rights in the Territories.
Undoubtedly. But the difficulty is that they cannot. The slaveholder
moves into a new Territory with his _institution_, and from that
moment the free white settler is virtually excluded. _His_
institutions he cannot take with him; they refuse to root themselves
in soil that is cultivated by slave-labor. Speech is no longer free;
the post-office is Austrianized; the mere fact of Northern birth may
be enough to hang him. Even now in Texas, settlers from the Free
States are being driven out and murdered for pretended complicity in a
plot the evidence for the existence of which has been obtained by
means without a parallel since the trial of the Salem witches, and the
stories about which are as absurd and contradictory as the confessions
of Goodwife Corey. Kansas was saved, it is true; but it was the
experience of Kansas that disgusted the South with Mr. Douglas's
panacea of "Squatter Sovereignty."

The claim of _equal_ rights in the Territories is a specious fallacy.
Concede the demand of the slavery-extensionists, and you give up every
inc