ns a capital one.

[218] Speech in the Senate, in 1855.

[219] Speech in Boston, October 3d, 1850.

[220] Mr. Sumner has a great deal to say, in his speech, about "the
memory of the fathers." When their sentiments agree with his own, or
only seem to him to do so, then they are "the demi-gods of history." But
only let these demi-gods cross his path or come into contact with his
fanatical notions, and instantly they sink into sordid knaves. The
framers of the Constitution of the United States, says he, made "a
compromise, which _cannot be mentioned without shame_. It was that
_hateful bargain_ by which Congress was restrained until 1808 from the
prohibition of the foreign slave trade, thus securing, down to that
period, _toleration for crime_." . . . . "The effrontery of slaveholders
was matched by _the sordidness of the Eastern members_." . . . . "The
bargain was struck, and at this price the Southern States gained the
detestable indulgence. At a subsequent day, Congress branded the slave
trade as piracy, and thus, by solemn legislative act, adjudged this
compromise to be _felonious and wicked_."

But for this compromise, as every one who has read the history of the
times perfectly well knows, no union could have been formed, and the
slave trade might have been carried on to the present day. By this
compromise, then, the Convention did not tolerate crime nor the slave
trade; they merely formed the Union, and, in forming it, _gained the
power to abolish the slave trade in twenty years_. The gain of this
power, which Congress had not before possessed, was considered by them
as a great gain to the cause of humanity. If the Eastern members, from a
blind and frantic hatred of slavery, had blasted all prospects of a
union, and at the same time put the slave trade beyond their power
forever, they would have imitated the wisdom of the abolitionists, who
always promote the cause they seek to demolish.

If any one will read the history of the times, he will see that "the
fathers," the framers of the Constitution, were, in making this very
compromise, governed by the purest, the most patriotic, and the most
humane, of motives. He who accuses them of corruption shows himself
corrupt; especially if, like Mr. Sumner, he can laud them on one page as
demi-gods, and on the very next denounce them as sordid knaves, who, for
the sake of filthy lucre, could enter into a "felonious and wicked"
bargain. Yet the very man who accuses them