inconvenience, risk or suffering. Those who acquiesce in the state of
things which they found existing, can hardly be thought criminal. But
most deeply criminal are they who give rise to the enormous evil with
which great revolutions in society are always attended, without the
fullest assurance of the greater good to be ultimately obtained. But if
it can be made to appear, even probably, that no good will be obtained,
but that the results will be evil and calamitous as the process, what
can justify such innovations? No human being can be so mischievous--if
acting consciously, none can be so wicked as those who, finding evil in
existing institutions, run blindly upon change, unforeseeing and
reckless of consequences, and leaving it to chance or fate to determine
whether the end shall be improvement, or greater and more intolerable
evil. Certainly the instincts of nature prompt to resist intolerable
oppression. For this resistance no rule can be prescribed, but it must
be left to the instincts of nature. To justify it, however, the
insurrectionists should at least have a reasonable probability of
success, and be assured that their condition will be improved by
success. But most extraordinary is it, when those who complain and
clamor are not those who are supposed to feel the oppression, but
persons at a distance from them, and who can hardly at all appreciate
the good or the evil of their situation. It is the unalterable condition
of humanity, that men must achieve civil liberty for themselves. The
assistance of allies has sometimes enabled nations to repel the attacks
of foreign power, never to conquer liberty against their own internal
government.

In one thing I concur with the abolitionsts; that if emancipation is to
be brought about, it is better that it should be immediate and total.
But let us suppose it to be brought about in any manner, and then
inquire what would be the effects.

The first and most obvious effect, would be to put an end to the
cultivation of our great Southern staple. And this would be equally the
result, if we suppose the emancipated negroes to be in no way
distinguished from the free laborers of other countries, and that their
labor would be equally effective. In that case, they would soon cease to
be laborers for hire, but would scatter themselves over our unbounded
territory, to become independent land owners themselves. The cultivation
of the soil on an extensive scale, can only be carrie