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THE VOICE OF FffiEEBOM. ALLEN POLAND, Publishers. . Published under the sanction of the VebJfteu Slavery Society. CIIAUNCEY L. KNAPP, Editor. ' , ' ' ' ' " VOLUME I. MofvTPELIER, VERMONT, JUNE Iff, 1830. HUM BE El 21. LETTER OF J. t, ADAMS. To the citizens of the United States, whose Pelt lions, Memorials, and Remonstrances hare been entrusted to me, to he presented to the. House of Representatives of the Unity States, at the third session of the 2oti Congress..' QuiNc'y, May 21, 1S39. Fellow Citizens : In n preceding- letter, publish ed in the National Intelliger of 23d April last, I informed you of the manner in winch the duty Jiad been discharged of presenting to the House Of Representatives the addresses to that body, Which It had been your pleasure tocammit to my care. Of the duty of the House to receive, to hear, to consider, and to answer those petitions, memorials, tind remonstrances, I had no more doubt than of my own duty to present them, and to ask the ac tion of the House upon them, from the moment when they were entrusted to my hands, w , The majority a large majority of the' House, however, were of a different opinion, and, follow ing the example which had been set by the Con gress immediately preceding, and by themselves at the last preceding session, they resolved to re ceive, but to my on the table, without reading, without printing, without debating, and without in any manner considering, every petition, memorial, resolution, proposition, or paper touching or relat ing to slavery in these United States, or the abo lition thereof. This resolution, you perceive, is not merely a general interdict of petitions and memorials from ilic People, but of resolutions, proposition.', or pa pers', whether presented by members of the House itself, or coming from lawful assemblies of the Peo ple, or from the Legislatures of the States. It is precisely the same in the results as if the House of Representatives had prohibited all its members from ever offering a resolution or addressing the Speaker upon any subject relating to slavery or the slave-trade. It is equivalent to a prohibition to the People to assemble together to discuss the merits and demerits of slavery and the slave-trade. It is in the result precisely the same as if the House should send a guard of soldiers to close the doors nf every Legislative Hall in the Union against all discussion upon the rights of man, the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independ ence, slavery, the slave-trade and its abolition. At every passage of this resolution I have felt deep indignation but far deeper humiliation. I have felt indignant at the suppression of my right as a member of the House of the right of my constit uents to use the privilege of freemen, to assemble together and deliberate upon freedom and slavery of the right of the Legislature of my native Commonwealth to pass resolutions expressing their detestation and that of their constituents of slavery in all its forms. But the deep humiliation that I have felt was as an American citizen. It was the consciousness of degradation from the lofty stand we had taken among the nations of- the earth, as the first proclaimers of the inalienable freedom of the human race. The ignominious transforma tion of the People who had commenced their ca reer in the world by the Declaration of Independ ence, into a nation of slave-traders and slave breeders, for sale, was a contemplation mortifying beyond endurance. I considered the institution of domestic, slavery existing in the Southern States of the Union as a misfortune entailed upon them in the colonial con dition, which, at the time of the Revolution, they considered in that light themselves. It was, how ever, a part of their internal organization, over which the Congress of the Revolution had never exercised jurisdiction, and which, so long as it could be maintained in peace, was reserved for the exclusive legislation of the several Stales. There was obviously a gross inconsistency between the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Inde pendence and the practice of holding human be ings in perpetual and hereditary bondage; and the supreme judicial tribunal ofthe Commonwealth of Massachusetts had decided, even before the con clusion of the Revolutionary war, that the princi ples of the Declaration of Independence, repeated in the Declaration of Rights prefixed to the Con stitution of the State, had ipso facto abolished all slavery within the Stale. During the war, and for several years after, slaves were considered as very unprofitable prop erty. When the Consti'ution of the Uuited States was adopted, the people of the free States were anxiously desirous of prohibiting the Importation of negroes from Africa. South Carolina and Geor gia were, however, not prepared for that, and a com promise was effected, by which a term of twenty years was allowed for procuring a supply of the article, and the trade was prohibited in 1808. But, in the mean time, cotton had become a sta ple article of our exportation, and some years after, the Colonization Society was instituted. Human forethought is sometimes strangely at fault in devising expedients for improving the condition of mankind. The African slave-trade was, if not introduced, countenanced and recom mended by Las Casas, one of the most amiable and benevolent of mankind, to save the Indian race from utter extermination. When the Congress of the Confederation, in the same year (1787) in which the Convention at Philadelphia sent for the ratification of the Peo ple the Constitution of the United States, enacted, by the ordinance for the government of the North western Territory, that there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude within jt, other wise than for the punishment of crimes; and when the power tp prohibit the African slave-trade was so universally and implicitly understood to be del egated to Congress by the general power to regu late commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, that an express provision was inserted in the Constitution restraining them from the exercise of that power for twenty yenrs, little was it imagined that the day would como when, within these United States, public men, ambitious of a name and aspirants to popular favor, would bo found to sophisticate slavery into a blessing, and to charge the signers of the Declaration of Independence with deliberate falsehood and per jurywith treason to their country and blasphemy to God. Yet so it is. ' If the principles proclaim ed in the Declaration of Independence as self-evi dent truths are not true ; if it be not true that all men are created equal; if they are not endowed oy ineir creator witn inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi ness; if Governments are not instituted to secure these rights, and do not derive their just powers from the consent of the gorented- then the Peo ple of these United Colonies had no right to re nounce their allegiance to the Government of Great Britain no right to declare themselves in dependent no riffht to take their separate and equal station among the Powers of the earth. In assuming that station, they declare themselves en titled to it by the laws of Nature and of Nature's God. By the laws of that same God they had been bound in allegiance to their king, lo this tie of allegiance, binding upon them from their birthjriTiultitudes of them had superadded the ob- igations of solemn and voluntary oaths. Who ould absolve them from these sacred pledges of their taith f Who but that people themselves And for what cause but that the Government itself had forfeited the right to their allegiance, by per verting its power to the destruction of the ends for which Governments are instituted? lake away from the Declaration of Independence its self-ev- dent truths, the natural and inalienable rights ol man, and you rob the ..ortn American revolution of all its moral principle, and proclaim it a loul and unnatural rebellion In the days of the Declaration of Independence there were pohiiciaiis,ay, and moralists profound conscientious moralists who maintained that doc trine ; but they were not A merican patriots, states neii or jurists. North and Mansfield, the prime minister and the chief dispciifor of the justice of lue realm ol liiiigluiid, verily believed that the peo pie of the colonies were rebels and traitors, and were prepared to hang, draw, quarter, and embowel thein, to prove the sincerity of their faith. Nor were they alone. Junius, th" groat unknown Junius, the grave, the didalic, the sublime champion of ngltttt liberty, utterly repudiating the dogmat ic and godless English lawyer's creed of the om nipotence of Parliament, still formally disclaims the concession of Chatham that the legislative power of Parliament was not the same over the colonies as over the island of Britain. Dr. Sam- vet. Johnson, the most renowned moralist of the age, could earn his pension of three hundred pounds a year by proving, in sesquipedalian prose, that taxation without representation was no tyran nv. And Soam Jenyns, tl.ie philosopher and poet, the ingenious author of the Internal Evidences of Christianity, to whom Paley is so deeply indebt ed Soam J envns, the poet and metaphysician, the profound discourser upon the nature of time and the origin of evil, and the elegant translator of the Latin poem of Browne on the Immortality of the soul, not only considered the right and expe diency ol taxing the colonies by Parliament indisptilably clear; hut, in a disquisition on gov ernment and civil liberty, has so completely fore stalled the philosophers of nullification of the pres ent day in their warfare against the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, that their omission to give him credit for their argu ments leaves them not entirely free from the im putation of plagiarism. In estimating the opinions of others upon poli tics, religion, and morals, while we are bound to follow exclusively the dictates of our own judg ment, enlightened by the honest and faithful search after truth, we must make large allowances and exercise a liberal spirit of toleration. In the mor el question of the North American Revolution, h; primary source of nil the arguments on the British side was constituted power. The argu ments on the American side were all drawn from elementary power. When the basement-story of the edifice is laid, the superstructure naturally rises upon corresponding principles of architecture. The framers of the Declaration of Independence could justify themselves and their country first, lor their resistance against oppression ; and, final ly, for undertaking and accomplishing the Revo lution upon no other principles than those which they declared. If their principles were unsound, American Independence was nothing more than successful rebellion. I adhere to the 'ethics of the Revolution. The sell-evident truths of the Peclaralion of Indepen dence are sliU. sell-evident truths, whether contest ed by the Chancellor of the British Exchequer or by a professor at the College of William and Ma ry ; whether clashing with the law of a Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, or with the equity of a Chancellor of the State of South Car olina. That the Lords North and Mansfield, and the vast majority of their contemporary countrymen, were sincere in the belief that they had a right teous cause, and that Washington and Franklin, Hancock nnd Richard Henry Lee, Roger Sher man and Arthur Middleton, were rebels and traitors, we have no reason to doubt. The truths of the Declaration of Independence are not limit ed by time or place ; they belong to the nature of man in every age and every clnne. lliey may be subdued, but can never be suppressed. They are truths at Constantinople and Pekin, at London and Paris, at Charleston pnd at Philadelphia.- They' were truths in the days of Abraham and of Solomon, of Zoroaster and Conlucius ; but as truths to influence human conduct, they were un known to all the nations of antiquity. They were revealed in the Gospel of Jesus, but were never expressly made the foundation of human govern ment untihthey were proclaimed in the Declara tion of Independence. But the Christian system of morals, while disclosing as eternal truth the natural equality of mankind, left all its practical consequences in their effect upon existing institu tions to the slow and gradual process of the hu man intellect. The Kingdom of Heaven was the name by which Jesus Christ announced his sys tem of religion and morality to the world ; but he said it was a kingdom not of this world. Ho did not say that it was to demolish the three hun dred thousand Gods of the Roman empire. Par less did he avow that it was to emancipate his country from tributary subjection to the Roman Emperor. On the contrary, though distinctly con testing the right of the Roman Government to ex a t tribute from him, he performed a miracle to pay for himself and his first Apoylct; -and whei asked for the express purpose of entangling him whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Cresar, he avoided the snare by an indirect and indecisive answer. He disclaimed all intention of destroy ing the ritual of the Levitical law, and left it ai a matter of grave controversy between the princi pal disciples till the abolition of that law was ex pressly disclosed in a vision to Peter. . But, although the kingdom of Christ was not of this world, and. although Christ himself cau tiously avoiucu all direct collision with existing in stitutions, religious or political, it was distinctly foreseen, even during his hie, and still more clear ly immediately after his death, that the Mosaic law, the Roman worship of idols, and the Roman iominion over tributary provinces miift eventually be abolished by the prevalence of Christianity, And whoever faithfully studies the Christian sys tem as a code of religion and morals, and exerci ses in reflection upon it the intellectual faculty he- stowed upon him by his Maker, cannot possibly ail ol coming to the conclusion that all violence, tyranny, nnd oppression, all exercise of unjust power by man over man, must ultimately fall be fore it. In the book of futurity, therefore, it is written as clearly as in the Gospel of Christ, that war and slavery shall cease to exist upon earth ; that nation shall no more rise against nation, nei ther shall there be war any more. But of the pe riod of time within which this revolution in the history of mankind, and this purification of the human character, is to be consummated, we have no distinct revelation, nor is human reason com petent to foresee. That hundreds nnd perhaps thousands of years must elapse in the progress of this improvement in the condition of the only ra tional tenant of the terrestrial globe, there cannot be a doubt, nor is it less clear that the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as self-evident truths, to be carried into practical ex ecution by all human Governments, are among the most effective means by which the progress is to be completed. That the glaring inconsistency between the in stitution ol -domestic hereditary slavery and these principles proclaimed as self-evident truths was one of the errors nnd infirmities of man, which would most speedily be made to vanish from the American code of legislation, was universally ex pected. In thirteen States of this Union, slavery has been actually abolished. In seven more, until very recently, the friends of freedom have cherished the sanguine hope and expectation that this curse would be banished from their borders ; but, in the mysterious ways of Providence, while, in thai opinion ol mankind, slavery nas been growing more and more odious ; while the civilized na tions of the earth have been combining to exter minate the African slave-trade, and to class it with the detested crime of piracy, here, in our country, slavery, like a wounded rattlesnake, lias turned upon her pursuers, and not only thrusts out her deadly fang in self-defence, but threatens with her mortal venom to contaminate us all. In seeking for the source of this strange retro- gression in the public opinion ol our southern Confederates, it is painful to observe that it must be traced to three causes, from which far other consequences might be hoped, and were antici pated. They were, 1. The introduction of the culture of cotton. 2. 1 he prohibition of the Af rican slave-trade ; and 3. The institution of the Colonization Society. The consequence of these incidents has been, by one and the same opera tion, greatly to increase the pecuniary value of the slaves as property, and to aggravate the cru- Ity of holding thein in bondage. The cultiva tion of cotton has given a double or treble value to their labor; and as, by the laws of Nature and of Nature's God, that labor is their own, the cruel ty and oppression of depriving them of it, and of appropriating it to other men, is proportionally ng' gravated. 1 he prohibition ol the importation of slaves from Africa, combining with this increased value of slave labor, has given to the domestic producer of the living article of merchandize all the benefits of a monopoly ; which the Coloniza tion Society has still further promoted by reducing the number of the living chattels, and thereby in creasing the demand for them in the market. I wish to take no part in the controversies be tween the Abolition and Colonization Societies, all of which I believe to have been formed under the influence of laudible motives, and all to pro mote the ultimate emancipation of the slaves in this Union. I believe the plans hitherto proposed by them all, so far as regards the abolition of slave ry, utterly impracticable ; and I believe them all equally liable, at this time, to the charge of perti naciously persisting in the pursuit ol objects ob viously and notoriously impracticable. I will not undertake dogmatically to affirm that colonies of civilized colored men cannot be estab lished and made to flourish on the coast of Afri ca ; nor am I prepared in advance to deny the in fluence which they may hereafter be destined to exercise in civilizing thp native land of slavery it self. So far as these may be the objects of the Colonization Societies, they may have my fervent good wihes, though very little of my hopes. But for the emancipation of the slaves or the abolition of slavery in the United States, the search for the philosopher's slope or the casting of nativities by the course of the stars, were rational amusements in comparison with the serious undertakings of the Colonization Society. With a high and sincere respect for many of the leading members of that society, a grave objection to which it has in my mind been always liable, is that of a double face. Consisting of distinguish ed citizens from the free and from the slavehold- ing States, it is commended to the patronage of the North and of the South upon totally different and indeed opposite principles. At the North it has been and is strictly an abolition society. The removal to Africa of emancipated slaves, is the argument in the North, to the humanity of the be nevolent, and the liberality of the rich. To re move from the plantation slave the dangerous and disaffected neighborhood of the free polore4 man, is the favorite argument for colonization at the South, There is in this an appearance of duplic ity, the more unfavorably prepossessing candid minds, inasmuch as experience hitherto counte nances the conclusion that the southern foresight had more of worldly wisdom on this occasion than that of the North. Other and recent circumstances, little noticed hitherto by the Public, have raised new questions with regard to the undertakings of the Coloniza tion Societies, which, without attaching undue im portance upon them, have bearings of very serious aspect upon the principles of our own Government. In the course of the last year the American Colo nization Society has been reinstituted under a new organization, and its directors have undertaken, bv self-assumed authority, to constitute a Republic- vf utoena, anu to corner upon the people ol that Re public the sovereign powers of declaring war, con cluding peace, and regulating commerce, with legislative, executive, and judicial departments of Uovcrument, all subject to the absolute nnd arbi trary control ol the Directors of the American Colonization Society. And will you believe that when, during the late session of Congress, I was about to expose this enormous assumption of pow er by a private association of American citizens, I was called to order, nnd not permitted to proceed, by the arbitrary interdict of the Chair, because, forsooth, it was not relevant to the question wheth er the Republic of Ilnyti should be recognized as in independent state! A sovereign, black Re public of Liberia, under the protection and con trol of the Americrn Colonization Society ! Mr. Van Buken has been severely censured for de nouncing, in his last annual Message to Congress, the anti-republican tendencies of associated wealth. If the imputation of anti-republican tendencies had been extended to all partial associations, it would have been more just and less exceptiona ble. For what is the republic itself but associated wealth ? The very name of Republic is compound ed of two Latin words, res runucA, signifying the associated wealth of the People ; and the word Commonwealth is but the literal Anglo-Saxon version of the same elements. The Republic. the Commonwealth, and associated wealth, are terms precisely synonymous, and lo charge asso ciated wealth with anti-republican tendencies is to ay that the Republic itsell is anti-republican. Ihe very derivation of this compound word, both in the Latin and English languages, proves that the institution of civil society is identical with as sociated wealth, as its great purposes are to pro tect and secure the rights of property as well as of persons. But as the Republic itself is one great commu nity of associated wealth, it may be said with strict propriety, and all experience will confirm the ob servation, that anti-republican tendencies are inci dental to all partial associations for the promotion of objects other than the good of all. The ten dencies of associated wealth are, therefore, not more anti-republican, perhaps not so much so, as those of associated poverty. The anti-republicati tendency consists not in the wealth or the poverty of the narties. hut in the nrincinlo nf nssm-intn,! power and in the purposes of the association. If it had been proposed to the President of the Unit ed States to introduce into his annunl Message a note of censure upon the anti-republican tenden cies of a Trades' Union, he would have perceiv ed instantly the invidious complexion which it would have given to the Message.. But if anti republican tendencies were manifested by self-constituted associated power, tell mc when, and where it was, if not in the undertaking of the American Colonization Society to constitute a sovereign ne gro Republic in Africa. Thus far, then, I concur in the sentiment of Mr. Van Bcrex, that all partial associations, organiz ed for action to influence the course of the Gov ernment, hr.'e certain nnti-republicnn tendencies, which require n watchful eye and a resolute pur pose in the guardians of the public interests, to keep them under control. And of nil the combi nations of associated wealth existing in this Union, that which is the most formidable to the Union it self, and to all its f:oe institutions, is the associat ed wealth consisting of three millions of human beings, forming n capital estimated at twelve hun dred millions of dollars. Of the anti-iepublican tendencies of that associated wealth there can he no doubt, nnd a President of the United States anxiously desirous to signalize his administration by uncompromising hostility to onli-re publican tendencies, may find ample occupation for his pat riotism in resisting the usurpation of that associat ed wealth, instead of a pigmy warfare with the anti-republican tendencies of exchange brokers, insurance companies, and cotton lactones. I consider the assumption of power by the Am erican i;oionizatinn society, m constituting the sovereign Republic of Liberia, ns one of those usurpations of that associated wealth by which, and for whose purposes the Society was institut ed. The world has seen with i s on'shmcrit an English East India Company exercising sovereign authority and dominion over millions of the peo ple of Asia, put the English East India Company have never constituted sovereign Republics. The American Colonization Society, without even a charter from Congress, confers upon a few hun dred negroes on the coast of Africa' the power ol making war and peace, of regulating commerce, and of doing whatever sovereign-,and independ ent States may of right do, but all subject to the control of this American private association. Jf the People are the source of all lawful Govern ment, how can a privato society in these United States bestow a Government upon the Republic of Liberia, in another quarter of the globe? If the Republic of Liberia is a sovereign state, invest ed with the power of making war and peace, how can they be subject to the direction and control of a self-constituted company of North Americans? All the theories of the rights of man upon which our political institutions are founded, all the repub lican principles of civil liberty and self-government, are discarded and set at untight by this colonial Republic of Liberia. The whole undertaking of the Colonization So ciety to establish colonies of free negroes on the coast of Africa, to disburden this continent from the load of its colored population, has, from its first inception, appeared to me a visionary and ut terly impracticable though benevolent project. And, in assigning tp you, friends and fellow-citizens, the reasons upon which 1 have doclarcd my self not prepared to vote for the immediate aboli tion of slavery in the District of Columbia, I must frankly acknowledge tlmt one of mycecisive rea, sons against U is the same which has deterred mo from ever giving nny aid or countenance- to the Colonization Society its impracticability. The immediate abolition of slavery in the Dis trict of Columbia is utterly impracticable. First, becnu.se. the public opinion throughout the Union is against it. This public opinion throughout all the slave States is unanimous, or so nearly so that no one dares to avow an opinion favorable to the measure. No member of Con gress from any one of the States where slavery is established, would dare to vote for it, nor could he return with fafety to his person ntnong his con-, stituents if he should. INoris the public opinion, in any one of the non-slaveholding Stales, with the possible excep tion of Vermont, favorable to it. The party of the present Administration are universslly ngairis it, if not in opinion, at least in action. All th strength of Mr. Van Buren in the South rests exclusively upon the pledges that he has given against this particular measure. All his friends in the North must and do sustain him in it, The Abolitionists are yet a small, and, I lament to say, a most unjustly persecuted party in all the free States. It is their martyr nge, and as they are in, a great measure actuated by religious principle, they suffer with the spirit of martyrdom an in vincible but necessarily an, unsuccessful principle, inasmuch as success leaves itno scope for action. The immediate abolition of slavery, therefore, in the District of Columbia, is no more in the power of any member of Congress to effect than the immediate abolition of polygamy at Constan tinople, or the immediate abolition of widow burn-; ing in Hindostan ; nnd if it were possible even to introduce into the House of Representatives a bill to that effect, I should vote against it so long as should know it to be not only unwelcome, but odi ous, to at least fqur-fifths pf the People through? out the Union. In a special manner should I be opposed to tho enactment of a law to operate exclusively upon the people of the District of Colu nbia, against the will of that people, and in compliance with petitions from persons not to be affected themselves by the law. This is contrary to the first priricj? pies of our institutions. The Declaration of in dependence derives all the just powers of govern ment from the consent of the governed, When the People ore represented in the Legislative As? seinbly, the consent of the whole must be inferred from the voice of the representative majority ; but when the People are to be bound by laws emana ting from a legislative assembly wherein they have no representatives, their will must be ascer?. tained by manifestations from themselves, Nov? it is certain that a, grpa.t majority of the inhabitant-? of the District are utterly averse to the abolition K' slavcr.V among them by law, and would consid- T " as an unconstitutional violation of their rights of property. I hold the opinion that one human being cannot be made the property of another. i That persons and things ure by the laws of Na ture and of Nature's God, so distinct that np hu man laws can transform either into the othev.--But this is not the opinion of the people of the District of Columbia ; and in the enactment of laws to bear exclusively upon them, and not upon, myself or my immediate constituents, I must bp governed by their will and not by my own. These two reasons the impracticability of ac complishing by law a measure of transcendant im portance against the public opinion of four-fifths of the nation, nnd the injustice of enacting a law against the will of those upon whom it is to bear, and against the will of others upon "whom it is not to operate at all have been, and will contin ue to be, decisive with me against any proposal in congress for the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Either of thein, would, if alone, bring me to the same conclusion. And indeed these have been among tlx reasons of my anxious desire that your petitions, particu larly for this measure, should not only be received by the House, but deliberately considered ; refer red to the Committee for the district of Columbia, or lo a select committee ; reported upon, and free ly discussed by the House. I have believed, and still believe, that, after such a full nnd free dis cussion any bill for the immediate abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia, should a com mittee even report such a bill, would be rejected in the House by a majority of at least four to one ; and I have hoped that, if not all, great mul titudes of you would, in the result of such a dis cussion, become convinced that the time has not yet enme when Justice herself would be satisfied with the immediate abolition of slavery in the Dis trict of Columbia. Your rights at least would be maintained inviolate, I trust that a full consider alion by yourselves of the injustice, under all pps-. sible circumstances, of legislation over a people against their will, at the demand of anpthcr people not subject tq the law themselves, would deter you from perseverance in a pursuit, your only motives ti which are the dispensation of justice to all. But should it prove otherwise, should you persist in petitioning from session lo session for the same boon, as in many of your petitions is declared to be your intention, the same TCspect, the same con sideration, and the same answer should, in my judgment, be given to your petitions, so long as the same reasons should bo applicable to them. I had long indulged the hope that the abolition of slavery in this Confederacy would be effected by the People of the several States in which it exists ; as has actually been done in the States of New York and Pennsylvania. Proposals for this most desirable consummation have, nt different limes, been actually made and discussed in thg Legislatures of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, and the time had been when in all those States a majority of the People would have sanctioned tho measure, Within a very few years a petition from mnny hundreds of the inhabitants of the District of Columbia itself was presented to Congress praying for the abolition of slavery there. Thq same spirit was then powerful, both in Virginia and Maryland. In both those States it is now si lent, if not extinct. The spirit pf slavery bns nc, quired not only an overruling ascendancy, but has become at once intolerant, prescriptive, nnd sophis tical. It has crept into the philosophical chairs of the schools. Its cloven-foot ligs entered tho