ly requested to have no opinion, or, having one, to
suppress it, on the one topic that has occupied caucuses, newspapers,
Presidents' messages, and Congress for the last dozen years, lest we
endanger the safety of the Union. The true danger to popular forms of
government begins when public opinion ceases because the people are
incompetent or unwilling to think. In a democracy it is the duty of
every citizen to think; but unless the thinking result in a definite
opinion, and the opinion lead to considerate action, they are nothing.
If the people are assumed to be incapable of forming a judgment for
themselves, the men whose position enables them to guide the public
mind ought certainly to make good their want of intelligence. But on
this great question, the wise solution of which, we are every day
assured, is essential to the permanence of the Union, Mr. Bell has no
opinion at all, Mr. Douglas says it is of no consequence which opinion
prevails, and Mr. Breckinridge tells us vaguely that "all sections have
an equal right in the common Territories." The parties which support
these candidates, however, all agree in affirming that the election of
its special favorite is the one thing that can give back peace to the
distracted country. The distracted country will continue to take care
of itself, as it has done hitherto, and the only question that needs an
answer is, What policy will secure the most prosperous future to the
helpless Territories, which our decision is to make or mar for all
coming time? What will save the country from a Senate and Supreme Court
where freedom shall be forever at a disadvantage?

There is always a fallacy in the argument of the opponents of the
Republican party. They affirm that all the States and all the citizens
of the States ought to have equal rights in the Territories.
Undoubtedly. But the difficulty is that they cannot. The slaveholder
moves into a new Territory with his _institution_, and from that moment
the free white settler is virtually excluded. _His_ institutions he
cannot take with him; they refuse to root themselves in soil that is
cultivated by slave-labor. Speech is no longer free; the post-office is
Austrianized; the mere fact of Northern birth may be enough to hang
him. Even now in Texas, settlers from the Free States are being driven
out and murdered for pretended complicity in a plot the evidence for
the existence of which has been obtained by means without a parallel
since