cheaper with slave labor than with free, he would employ slaves! And what, also, as I am credibly informed, another has said, "The south want slaves to raise cotton to sell; we want slaves to raise cotton to manufacture; therefore, we must unite with the south to uphold slavery." Now, I believe these things to have been said; but it is of no consequence whether they were said or not; we know they have been acted. Every man who upholds this Fugitive Slave law acts them, whatever his language may be.

The compromise was forced through Congress partly by government interference, and partly by the delusive hope of a tariff. An appeal is now made, in behalf of the Fugitive Slave law, to the same mercenary motives. It is said, if opposition be made to this law, however legal or constitutional such opposition may be, we shall lose southern custom. Base and infamous appeal! Such men are made of the stuff of the tories of the revolution. Even if this appeal were true, it would be one that no honorable man could hear without indignation. But it is not true. The south must have their goods from somewhere, and our industrious artisans will make them, whoever the go-betweens may be. Will the south go bare-headed and barefooted and unkilted, because they cannot have a law to catch freemen and slaves promiscuously? But it is said the south will abandon their slothful habits, become industrious, and manufacture for themselves. wish they would. It would be most fortunate for us. They would then have the means of buying more from the north, and paying us better for what they do buy. Instead of spending only the money which their slaves earn, they would then have money to spend earned by the whites, and would become better customers for those ever new forms of commodities which our industry and inventive skill, while we keep our schoolhouses in operation, will always be able to supply.

Show

Now, fellow-citizens, I have gone into these considerations for the purpose of ascertaining and of measuring the extent and the efficacy of the motives brought by our opponents to bear against us. You see they are mercenary, almost exclusively so. As for that bugbear of a dissolution of the Union, I say, without fear of contradiction, that no practical man has ever believed in it for a day. United States stocks at a hundred and sixteen, on the eve of a dissolution of the Union! The whole South Carolina, and Mississippi, and Texas delegations in Congress contending for every local advantage, for the establishment of new United States courts, for the increase of salaries, for appointments at home and abroad, as though the Union had been just insured for a thousand years! me one intelligent man in the whole country who has sold his stocks or his farm, or changed his residence, or altered his course of life in any respect, through fear that the Union was about to be dissolved. I think some persons may have left South Carolina, to get rid of the clamor about dissolving it. Why, what would the English national debt be worth under any wellfounded apprehension that the British monarchy was crumbling to pieces? There would not be a pound of government securities that could not be bought for a penny. Confidence in the stability of our Union has not only pervaded this country, but other countries. The great bankers abroad who deal in our stocks have never changed their terms one mill in a million of dollars, through any such idle fear. They are the men whose barometers presage political storms. With such facts before us, to say that the Union has been in danger is as absurd as to say that a whirlwind is raging when the leaf of the aspen is pendulous, and cannot be seen to move. If the south wishes to dissolve the Union, let them do it, and at the end of thirty years there will be no slave in all their borders.

The slaves will have made a new Jamaica or a new St. Domingo of it, as the masters shall behave themselves. No, this is nothing but a clumsy trick of the politicians; and if any one of them could be nominated for the presidency, we should hear nothing more from him about any deluge which threatens to submerge the Union. They profess peculiar love for the Union. Their clamorous notes bring to mind what Dr. Franklin remarked of self-righteous people. He said they always reminded him of scarcity of provisions; those who had enough said nothing about it; it was the destitute who made all the clamor.

are not.

I say, then, the only remaining motive with which our adversaries can work is the loss of southern trade. This interests but few of our people. The farmers are not interested in it. The mechanics and artisans The operatives in our mills are not. All our substantial, industrious classes are above this temptation, and would spurn it if they were not above it. The Fugitive Slave law champions, then, can make no more converts among them. Let us, then, continue to oppose this law in all constitutional modes. Let us explain its religious and moral bearings to the Christian. Let us tell the patriot of the disgrace it brings upon our country. Let us show to the working-man that those who are ready to make slaves of his fellow-beings for lucre will be equally ready to make a slave of him whenever interest shall supply the temptation.

Fellow-citizens, it has been asked why we are assembled here to-day, and not in the Hall consecrated to liberty. It is because the doors of that hall have been closed to Liberty knocking for admission. But there is a melancholy propriety in this. When the court house is in chains, Faneuil Hall may well be dumb. Those chains which girt the courts of justice are but typical of the chains which tyrannous men are striving to put upon our lips. This is not the first temple that has

been unrighteously invaded and taken possession of by money changers and those who sold doves, - doves! doves!! No, not doves, -but men, women, and children. But I trust the time is not far distant when a better spirit shall enter their doors, and shall scourge out their invaders with cords, smaller or larger, as the exigencies of the case may require.

SPEECH

DELIVERED AT WORCESTER, SEPTEMBER 16, 1851, ON TAKING THE CHAIR AS PRESIDENT OF THE FREE SOIL STATE CON

VENTION.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION;

Accept my thanks. It would be an honor at any time to stand in this position before a body of men so large in their number and so influential by their respectability. But, gentlemen, at this hour of trial, at this time of peril to great principles, when the lights upon earth seem to be going out around us, and we must look for guidance to the lights above, at this hour, I say, of trial and of peril, it is an especial honor to be called to a post of duty. The position of the friends of freedom at the present time reminds me of a beautiful sentiment expressed by one of the noblest of the old Roman philosophers, who said that those who were called to fill stations of danger and self-sacrifice should thank God for the honor of being deemed worthy of such a trust.*

Gentlemen, it was not until this morning, and since sunrise, that I was waited upon by a delegation from your state committee, requesting my presence on this occasion. They knew, and you all know, how strongly my heart throbs, even at the mention of the great principles for which you contend. They knew, as you all know, how happy I should be if I could do any thing to deepen or to diffuse a feeling of devotion to human freedom.

*Seneca. [The passage is quoted in the Dedication, pp. ix., x.]