of society be broken up, and the windows of heaven's displeasure shall be opened; and a base and irreverent and corrupt world shall be swept away, to prepare for

some new creation.

My Brethren, bear with me one moment longer. We must think of these things! The whole people must think of them! We, the people, contribute to make the Government what it is. We are not the Government; we do not wield that power; but we give it its moral character; we impart to it its wisdom or folly, its violence or moderation, its spirit of justice and patriotism, or of injustice and party animosity. We elect the men who shall administer the Government; and the spirit in which we choose them is the spirit in which they will govern. And I do earnestly say again and again, we must think, we the people, must think of all this. We must reform our careless ways of thinking on this subject. We must take up a new idea of the solemn and majestic function of Government. We must take up a new idea of our duties. Grave and thoughtful must be the steps that lead us to the ballot. We must remember that we are putting forth a hand there, that is to touch the weal or woe of millions of people, and of the future generations. If we choose for office bad men, be their politics what they may; if we choose reckless, headstrong, violent, unprincipled men; if we choose for a nation's guidance, men whom we would not trust with our private affairs-men to hold the reins of the supreme rule, whom we would not trust to hold the strings of our private purse; what can we expect but the displeasure of the just God, and the reproach of all just men? Who shall care for our fate, if we thus Who will pity us in the day of our cala

sport with it?

mity? Nobody. We shall be the world's wonder and the world's scorn for our folly and guilt.

No, PEOPLE of America! the burden is upon you. The burden of the future is upon you. If you fail, heaven and earth will make inquisition for your negligence and recklessness-for never was people so favoured. Favoured and fortunate thus far; but if ever the dark days shall come-which heaven forbid !—if ever disunion and anarchy shall overspread this land; if ever its fair borders shall "shine o'er with civil swords," and be covered with blood and carnage, then shall its desolated dwellings make inquisition of you, of your pulpits, of your people. Then will God demand of you, and say, "Ah! sinful nation! a seed of evil doers! children that are corrupters! ye have forsaken the Lord; ye have provoked the holy One to anger; your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence; and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers!"

XVIII.

THE SLAVERY QUESTION.

REMEMBER THEM THAT ARE IN BONDS.-Hebrews, xiii. 3.

IPROPOSE to offer some remarks, this evening, on the Slavery question. It is a question of humanity, and by that claim, they that are in bonds, are always to be remembered. It is one of the great moral questions of the day, and proper at all times to be discussed. But I think it must have been pressed upon our attention in an especial manner during the past winter, by the debates upon it that have agitated the national Legislature. It has really been, next to the Mexican war, the great question of the Session; and in point of actual interest, greater than that. It is a matter of great moral interest to us, and to every one of us; because we have, or shall have, duties to discharge in regard to it, of the highest possible moment.

For it has become apparent, I think, that the whole North will take a stand in regard to the extension of slavery, that must give to the question, a new and very solemn importance. The slavery question is fast becoming the great trial question in this country; the question on which its politics, its peace, perhaps its union depends. For myself, I cannot look without apprehension to the discussion and the legislative action, to which I see that this question is to be subjected. I cannot altogether sympathize with the tone of nonchalance with which some of our Northern and Western

men say to the South, "You cannot, and you dare not, break off from us." When I have listened to the men of the South on this subject; when I have heard them on the floor of Congress, pledge conscience, honour, and life to withstand the evidently and equally fixed purpose of the North, I have seen passion, indeed, but it seemed to me a passion of the deepest sincerity and determination. It is said, I know, that interest, palpable and pressing interest, must keep us together. I answer that the bonds of interest have been a thousand times broken by the force of passion; that it is intemperate passion which we have to fear; and that there seems to be enough of this, in the case, to awaken the serious concern of all thoughtful men. I would do no injustice to the men of the South. It is not passion alone, I know, that animates them; but it is apparently the deepest sense of wrong meditated against them, as they conceive, in the fixed determination of the North to forbid all further extension of their system.

During the last winter I have entered a little within the borders of the Slave-system; I have conversed with some of the ablest and wisest men of the South on the subject; and I have come to entertain the conviction that we of the North ought to know them and their system better than we do, to render full justice to either. When Mr. Quinet, the celebrated Parisian professor, proposed to write a book on UltraMontanism, i. e. the highest Roman Catholic pretensions-he determined as he tells us, though living in a Catholic country, to go to Spain, where that system exists in its fullest vigour, and to study it there. And so do I conceive that he who would write upon the Slave-system, should go to the very field, on which its character is fully displayed. He cannot know either the good or the evil of it--either the qualified good or

the positive evil, without seeing it. I do not say that it is necessary to take a journey to South Carolina or Louisiana to decide that slavery is abstractly wrong; that it was wrong originally to bring men into that condition. Few question this, whether at the North or South. But to determine what can be done, what ought to be done, what is best to be done this requires a careful, eye-witnessing study of the system, in its actual condition and complicated relations. The Southern men complain that we of the North are dealing with abstractions; that we do not understand the case; that we are mistaking names for things, and pictures of the imagination for realities. I admit that something of this is likely enough to be true. I have long since come to be convinced that we thoroughly know nothing but what we experience and see. I admit the force of all this; but I might remind our brethren of the South that it has a double application. For, I must say, neither do they seem to understand us. They seem to think it is all passion and fanaticism with us at the North. I have thought it very remarkable that they do not appear to know, to recognize the moral difficulties which we have with the subject; the difficulties not of fanatics, not of men who are bestirring themselves in this matter because they can't keep still about anything; but of sober and thoughtful men, who sit apart and meditate the question by themselves. For what other, I ask, than a moral interest can we have in the question? We have no immediate concern with it. What is it, in the name of reason? what can it be, but a feeling for the right and for humanity that is leading the whole North and the whole world, in fact, to take the attitude which it is assuming on this subject?

It is true, then, that neither party is likely very well