e that the question became to the Free States a
practical question. There could be no "fanaticism" in meeting it at this
stage. What usually goes under the name of fanaticism is the habit of
uncompromising assault on a thing because its principles are absurd
or wicked; what usually goes under the name of common sense is the
disposition to assail it at that point where, in the development of its
principles, it has become immediately and pressingly dangerous. Now by
no sophistry could we of the Free States evade the responsibility of
being the extenders of Slavery, if we allowed Slavery to be extended. If
we did not oppose it from a sense of right, we were bound to oppose it
from a sense of decency. It may be said that we had nothing to do with
Slavery at the South; but we had something to do with rescuing the
national character from infamy, and unhappily we could not have anything
to do with rescuing the national character from infamy without having
something to do with Slavery at the South. The question with us was,
whether we would allow the whole force of the National Government to be
employed in upholding, extending, and perpetuating this detestable and
nonsensical enormity?--especially, whether we would be guilty of that
last and foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate planting of
slave institutions on virgin soil? If this question had been put to
any despot of Europe,--we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,--his
answer would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. Yet the South
confidently expected so to wheedle or bully us into dragging our common
sense through the mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we should
connive at the commission of this execrable crime!

There can be no doubt, that, if the question had been fairly put to the
inhabitants of the Free States, their answer would have been at once
decisive for freedom. Even the strongest conservatives would have been
"Free-Soilers,"--not only those who are conservatives in virtue of
their prudence, moderation, sagacity, and temper, but prejudiced
conservatives, conservatives who are tolerant of all iniquity which is
decorous, inert, long-established, and disposed to die when its time
comes, conservatives as thorough in their hatred of change as Lamennais
himself. "What a noise," says Paul Louis Courier, "Lamennais would have
made on the day of creation, could he have witnessed it. His first cry
to the Divinity would have been to respect