eldom obtained among men,
and which perhaps was only fully exemplified during the worst times of
the French Revolution, when that horrid hell burnt with its most lurid
flame. In such a state of things, to be accused is to be condemned--to
protect the innocent is to be guilty; and what perhaps is the worst
effect, even men of better nature, to whom their own deeds are
abhorrent, are goaded by terror to be forward and emulous in deeds of
guilt and violence. The scenes of lawless violence which have been acted
in some portions of our country, rare and restricted as they have been,
have done more to tarnish its reputation than a thousand libels. They
have done more to discredit, and if any thing could, to endanger, not
only our domestic, but our republican institutions, than the
abolitionists themselves. Men can never be permanently and effectually
disgraced but by themselves, and rarely endangered but by their own
injudicious conduct, giving advantage to the enemy. Better, far better,
would it be to encounter the dangers with which we are supposed to be
threatened, than to employ such means for averting them. But the truth
is, that in relation to this matter, so far as respects actual
insurrection, when alarm is once excited, danger is absolutely at an
end. Society can then employ legitimate and more effectual measures for
its own protection. The very commission of such deeds is proof that they
are unnecessary. Let those who attempt them, then, or make any
demonstration toward them, understand that they will meet only the
discountenance and abhorrence of all good men, and the just punishment
of the laws they have dared to outrage.

It has commonly been supposed, that this institution will prove a source
of weakness in relation to military defense against a foreign country. I
will venture to say that in a slaveholding community, a larger military
force may be maintained permanently in the field, than in any State
where there are not slaves. It is plain that almost the whole of the
able bodied free male population, making half of the entire able bodied
male population, may be maintained in the field, and this without taking
in any material degree from the labor and resources of the country. In
general, the labor of our country is performed by slaves. In other
countries, it is their laborers that form the material of their armies.
What proportion of these can be taken away without fatally crippling
their industry and resource