e must expect, when the press is
free, as it is here, and I trust always will be; for, with all its
licentiousness and all its evil, the entire and absolute freedom of the
press is essential to the preservation of government on the basis of a
free constitution. Wherever it exists there will be foolish and violent
paragraphs in the newspapers, as there are, I am sorry to say, foolish
and violent speeches in both houses of Congress. In truth, Sir, I must
say that, in my opinion, the vernacular tongue of the country has become
greatly vitiated, depraved, and corrupted by the style of our
Congressional debates. And if it were possible for those debates to
vitiate the principles of the people as much as they have depraved their
tastes, I should cry out, "God save the Republic!"

Well, in all this I see no solid grievance, no grievance presented by
the South, within the redress of the government, but the single one to
which I have referred; and that is, the want of a proper regard to the
injunction of the Constitution for the delivery of fugitive slaves.

There are also complaints of the North against the South. I need not go
over them particularly. The first and gravest is, that the North adopted
the Constitution, recognizing the existence of slavery in the States,
and recognizing the right, to a certain extent, of the representation of
slaves in Congress, under a state of sentiment and expectation which
does not now exist; and that, by events, by circumstances, by the
eagerness of the South to acquire territory and extend her slave
population, the North finds itself, in regard to the relative influence
of the South and the North, of the free States and the slave States,
where it never did expect to find itself when they agreed to the compact
of the Constitution. They complain, therefore, that, instead of slavery
being regarded as an evil, as it was then, an evil which all hoped would
be extinguished gradually, it is now regarded by the South as an
institution to be cherished, and preserved, and extended; an institution
which the South has already extended to the utmost of her power by the
acquisition of new territory.

Well, then, passing from that, everybody in the North reads; and
everybody reads whatsoever the newspapers contain; and the newspapers,
some of them, especially those presses to which I have alluded, are
careful to spread about among the people every reproachful sentiment
uttered by any Southern man bearing