shadow the whole land? It is the
natural office of such a principle to wrestle with slavery, wheresoever
it finds it. New States, colonized by the apostles of this principle,
will enable it to set on foot a fanatical crusade against all who still
continue to tolerate it, although no practicable means are pointed out
by which they can get rid of it consistently with their own safety. At
any rate, a present forbearing disposition, in a few or in many, is not
a security upon which much reliance can be placed upon a subject as to
which so many selfish interests and ardent feelings are connected with
the cold calculations of policy. Admitting, however, that the old United
States are in no danger from this principle--why is it so? There can be
no other answer (which these zealous enemies of slavery can use) than
that the Constitution recognizes slavery as existing or capable of
existing in those States. The Constitution, then, admits that slavery
and a republican form of government are not incongruous. It associates
and binds them up together and repudiates this wild imagination which
the gentlemen have pressed upon us with such an air of triumph. But the
Constitution does more, as I have heretofore proved. It concedes that
slavery may exist in a new State, as well as in an old one--since the
language in which it recognizes slavery comprehends new States as well
as actual. I trust then that I shall be forgiven if I suggest, that no
eccentricity in argument can be more trying to human patience, than a
formal assertion that a constitution, to which slave-holding States were
the most numerous parties, in which slaves are treated as property
as well as persons, and provision is made for the security of that
property, and even for an augmentation of it by a temporary importation
from Africa, with a clause commanding Congress to guarantee a republican
form of government to those very States, as well as to others,
authorizes you to determine that slavery and a republican form of
government cannot coexist.

But if a republican form of government is that in which all the men have
a share in the public power, the slave-holding States will not alone
retire from the Union. The constitutions of some of the other States do
not sanction universal suffrage, or universal eligibility. They require
citizenship, and age, and a certain amount of property, to give a title
to vote or to be voted for; and they who have not those qualifications
are j