usehold in the land, has voluntarily subjected
itself to a graver responsibility, and renounced all title to fall back
upon any reserved right of personal comfort or convenience.

We say, then, that we are glad to see this division in the Tract
Society; not glad because of the division, but because it has sprung
from an earnest effort to relieve the Society of a reproach which was
not only impairing its usefulness, but doing an injury to the cause of
truth and sincerity everywhere. We have no desire to impugn the motives
of those who consider themselves conservative members of the Society;
we believe them to be honest in their convictions, or their want of
them; but we think they have mistaken notions as to what conservatism
is, and that they are wrong in supposing it to consist in refusing to
wipe away the film on their spectacle-glasses which prevents their
seeing the handwriting on the wall, or in conserving reverently the
barnacles on their ship's bottom and the dry-rot in its knees. We yield
to none of them in reverence for the Past; it is there only that the
imagination can find repose and seclusion; there dwells that silent
majority whose experience guides our action and whose wisdom shapes our
thought in spite of ourselves;--but it is not length of days that can
make evil reverend, nor persistence in inconsistency that can give it
the power or the claim of orderly precedent. Wrong, though its
title-deeds go back to the days of Sodom, is by nature a thing of
yesterday,--while the right, of which we became conscious but an hour
ago, is more ancient than the stars, and of the essence of Heaven. If
it were proposed to establish Slavery to-morrow, should we have more
patience with its patriarchal argument than with the parallel claim of
Mormonism? That Slavery is old is but its greater condemnation; that we
have tolerated it so long, the strongest plea for our doing so no
longer. There is one institution to which we owe our first allegiance,
one that is more sacred and venerable than any other,--the soul and
conscience of Man.

What claim has Slavery to immunity from discussion? We are told that
discussion is dangerous. Dangerous to what? Truth invites it, courts
the point of the Ithuriel-spear, whose touch can but reveal more
clearly the grace and grandeur of her angelic proportions. The
advocates of Slavery have taken refuge in the last covert of desperate
sophism, and affirm that their institution is of Divine or