ehension, the expedient, namely,
of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle
between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue
until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But
Slavery exhibits this struggle in its earliest and most savage stage,
a stage answering to the rude energies and still ruder conceptions of
barbarians. The issue of the struggle, it is plain, will not be that
capital will own labor, but that labor will own capital, and no _man_ be
owned.

Still we were vehemently told, that, though the slaves, for their own
good, were deprived of their rights as men, they were in a fine state
of physical comfort. This was not and could not be true; but even if it
were, it only represented the slaveholder as addressing his slave in
some such words of derisive scorn as Byron hurls at Duke Alphonso,--

"Thou! born to eat, and be despised, and die, Even as the brutes that
perish,"--

though we doubt if he could truly add,--

"save that thou Hast a more splendid trough and wider sty."

Then we were solemnly warned of our patriotic duty to "know no North and
no South." This was the very impudence of ingratitude; for we had long
known no North, and unhappily had known altogether too much South.

Then we were most plaintively adjured to to comply with the demands of
the Slave Power, in order to save the Union. But how save the Union?
Why, by violating the principles on which the Union was formed, and
scouting the objects it was intended to serve.

But lastly came the question, on which the South confidently relied as
a decisive argument, "What could we do with our slaves, provided we
emancipated them?" The peculiarity which distinguished this question
from all other interrogatories ever addressed to human beings was this,
that it was asked for the purpose of not being answered. The moment a
reply was begun, the ground was swiftly shifted, and we were overwhelmed
with a torrent of words about State Rights and the duty of minding our
own business.

But it is needless to continue the examination of these substitutes and
apologies for fact and reason, especially as their chief characteristic
consisted in their having nothing to do with the practical question
before the people. They were thrown out by the interested defenders of
Slavery, North and South, to divert attention from the main issue. In
the fine felicity of their in appropriateness to the a