same
custom prevails both in France and England. Few of your Prime Ministers,
of the last half century even, have escaped the contagion, I believe.
The affrays, of which so much is said, and in which rifles, bowie-knives
and pistols are so prominent, occur mostly in the frontier States of the
South-West. They are naturally incidental to the condition of society,
as it exists in many sections of these recently settled countries, and
will as naturally cease in due time. Adventurers from the older States,
and from Europe, as desperate in character as they are in fortune,
congregate in these wild regions, jostling one another and often forcing
the peaceable and honest into rencontres in self-defense. Slavery has
nothing to do with these things. Stability and peace are the first
desires of every slaveholder, and the true tendency of the system. It
could not possibly exist amid the eternal anarchy and civil broils of
the ancient Spanish dominions in America. And for this very reason,
domestic slavery has ceased there. So far from encouraging strife, such
scenes of riot and bloodshed, as have within the last few years
disgraced our Northern cities, and as you have lately witnessed in
Birmingham and Bristol and Wales, not only never have occurred, but I
will venture to say, never will occur in our slaveholding States. The
only thing that can create a mob (as you might call it) here, is the
appearance of an abolitionist, whom the people assemble to chastise. And
this is no more of a mob, than a rally of shepherds to chase a wolf out
of their pastures would be one.

But we are swindlers and repudiators? Pennsylvania is not a slave State.
A majority of the States which have failed to meet their obligations
punctually are non-slaveholding; and two-thirds of the debt said to be
repudiated is owed by these States. Many of the States of this Union are
heavily encumbered with debt--none so hopelessly as England.
Pennsylvania owes $22 for each inhabitant--England $222, counting her
paupers in. Nor has there been any repudiation definite and final, of a
lawful debt, that I am aware of. A few States have failed to pay some
installments of interest. The extraordinary financial difficulties which
occurred a few years ago will account for it. Time will set all things
right again. Every dollar of both principal and interest, owed by any
State, North or South, will be ultimately paid, _unless the abolition of
slavery overwhelms us all in one