ssionists could accomplish their schemes, who would
be the losers? Not the Free States, certainly, with their variety of
resources and industry. The laws of trade cannot be changed, and the
same causes which have built up their agriculture, commerce, and
manufactures will not cease to be operative. The real wealth
and strength of states, other things being equal, depends upon
homogeneousness of population and variety of occupation, with a common
interest and common habits of thought. The cotton-growing States, with
their single staple, are at the mercy of chance. India, Australia, nay,
Africa herself, may cut the thread of their prosperity. Their population
consists of two hostile races, and their bone and muscle, instead
of being the partners, are the unwilling tools of their capital
and intellect. The logical consequence of this political theory is
despotism, which the necessity of coercing the subject race will make a
military one. Already South Carolina is discussing a standing army. If
history is not a lying gossip, the result of the system of labor will be
Jamaica, and that of the system of polity, Mexico. Instead of a stable
government, they will have a whirligig of _pronunciamientos_, or
stability will be purchased at a cost that will make it intolerable.
They have succeeded in establishing among themselves a fatal unanimity
on the question of Slavery,--fatal because it makes the office of spy
and informer honorable, makes the caprice of a mob the arbiter of
thought, speech, and action, and debases public opinion to a muddy
mixture of fear and prejudice. In peace, the majority of their
population will be always looked on as conspirators; in war, they would
become rebels.

It is time that the South should learn, if they do not begin to suspect
it already, that the difficulty of the Slavery question is slavery
itself,--nothing more, nothing less. It is time that the North should
learn that it has nothing left to compromise but the rest of its
self-respect. Nothing will satisfy the extremists at the South short of
a reduction of the Free States to a mere police for the protection of an
institution whose danger increases at an equal pace with its wealth.

It was the deliberate intention of Mr. Calhoun that the compact should
be broken the moment the absolute control of Government passed out of
the hands of the slaveholding clique. He was willing to wait till we
had stolen Texas and paid a hundred millions for Cuba;