g kicked off the king and lords of Great Britain, we
should not at once be saddled with a king and lords of our own.

I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in
the condition of all men everywhere; but no, it merely "was adopted for
the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world
in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving
their connection with the mother country." Why, that object having been
effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no practical use
now--mere rubbish--old wadding left to rot on the battlefield after the
victory is won.

I understand you are preparing to celebrate the "Fourth," to-morrow week.
What for? The doings of that day had no reference to the present; and
quite half of you are not even descendants of those who were referred to
at that day. But I suppose you will celebrate, and will even go so far
as to read the Declaration. Suppose, after you read it once in the
old-fashioned way, you read it once more with Judge Douglas's version. It
will then run thus:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all British subjects who
were on this continent eighty-one years ago were created equal to all
British subjects born and then residing in Great Britain."

And now I appeal to all--to Democrats as well as others--are you really
willing that the Declaration shall thus be frittered away?--thus left no
more, at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past?--thus shorn
of its vitality and practical value, and left without the germ or even the
suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?

But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing
of blood by the white and black races. Agreed for once--a thousand times
agreed. There are white men enough to marry all the white women and black
men enough to many all the black women; and so let them be married. On
this point we fully agree with the Judge, and when he shall show that his
policy is better adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours, we shall drop
ours and adopt his. Let us see. In 1850 there were in the United States
405,751 mulattoes. Very few of these are the offspring of whites and free
blacks; nearly all have sprung from black slaves and white masters. A
separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation;
but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to
keep them apart where t