slave involves in a great measure the necessary dominion over the
persons and interests of the balance of society where it exists. The
lust of power on the part of slaveholders, and on the part of the
privileged classes in Europe, in nature, is the same. The determination
through the artificial arrangements of power, to subsist on the toil of
others, is the same. The arrogant assumption of the right to maintain as
privilege what originated in atrocious wrong, is the same. The
disposition to crush by force any attempt to vindicate natural rights,
or to modify the status of society under the severity of oppression, is
the same; and no tyranny has yet been found so tenacious or
objectionable as the tyranny of a class held together by the 'bond of
iniquity.' Our forefathers had a just conception of the nature of the
case, on one hand, when they interdicted by fundamental law the
establishment of any order of nobility. Many of them were sorely
distressed at the contemplation of slavery on the other hand, in
connection with its probable results upon the national welfare. Our
calamity is but the fulfillment of their prophecies. They well knew the
nature of the evil we have to deal with.

It is matter of astonishment to most minds that slaveholders should have
contemplated the bold venture of subordinating the Democratic principle
in government. It will be less astonishing, however, when it is duly
considered that it is utterly impossible for Democracy and Slavery to
abide long together. The one or the other must ere long have been
prostrated under the laws of population, and it is not very likely that
the twenty-seven millions and their increase would consent to be
subordinated to the policy of three hundred and fifty thousand
slaveholders. Slavery must exist as the ruling political power, or it
can not long exist at all. This the slaveholders well knew; hence the
necessity of fortifying itself through some political arrangement
against the Democratic power of the masses.

The South-Carolina platform for a new government had close resemblance
to the ancient Roman--a patrician order of nobility, founded on the
interested motive to uphold slavery; but allowing plebeian
representation, to some extent, to the non-slaveholding classes. Others
in the South had preference for constitutional monarchy, with a class of
privileged legislators, and House of Commons, composing a government of
checks and balances, analogous to the Englis