his speech of February 5, 1850, says: "The States being
separated, I would as soon return my own brother or sister into bondage,
as I would return a fugitive slave. Before God, and Christ, and all
Christian men, they are my brothers and sisters." What a condition! From
the lips, too, of a champion of the Higher Law! Whether the States
be separate or united, neither my brother nor any other man's brother
shall, with my consent, go back to bondage! So speaks the heart--Mr.
Mann's version is that of the politician.

This seems to me a very mistaken strain. Whenever slavery is banished
from our national jurisdiction, it will be a momentous gain, a vast
stride. But let us not mistake the half-way house for the end of the
journey. I need not say that it matters not to Abolitionists under what
special law slavery exists. Their battle lasts while it exists anywhere,
and I doubt not Mr. Sumner and Mr. Giddings feel themselves enlisted
for the whole war. I will even suppose, what neither of these gentlemen
states, that their plan includes not only that slavery shall be
abolished in the District and Territories but that the slave basis
of representation shall be struck from the Constitution, and the
slave-surrender clause construed away. But even then does Mr. Giddings
or Mr. Sumner really believe that slavery, existing in its full force in
the States, "will cease to vex our national politics?" Can they point to
any State where a powerful oligarchy, possessed of immense wealth, has
ever existed without attempting to meddle in the government? Even now,
does not manufacturing, banking, and commercial capital perpetually vex
our politics? Why should not slave capital exert the same influence?
Do they imagine that a hundred thousand men, possessed of two thousand
millions of dollars, which they feel the spirit of the age is seeking
to tear from their grasp, will not eagerly catch at all the support they
can obtain by getting the control of the government? In a land where the
dollar is almighty, "where the sin of not being rich is only atoned for
by the effort to become so," do they doubt that such an oligarchy will
generally succeed? Besides, banking and manufacturing stocks are not
urged by despair to seek a controlling influence in politics. They know
they are about equally safe, whichever party rules--that no party wishes
to legislate their rights away. Slave property knows that its being
allowed to exist depends on its having the