e principle to which _all_ equally deferred. But it is the
_will_ of the ruling or aristocratic class in all similar cases, and not
the forms of law or principle, which accomplishes such changes, whether
according to the forms of law or in disregard of them. _This class are
never respecters of principle_, but rule in virtue not of what
principles empower them to do, as a majority, but of the power of might
and dominant strength. It is obvious that were they to do the former,
they would be destitute of any other power than pertained to the whole
community, they in part, and others equally. Accordingly, they having,
once for all, in their adhesion to the Constitution, and again on its
eve, consented to an election, and therefore its issue, when a majority
of the entire nation elected a representative of the Chicago
declaration, they reverted to their power of might, and rebelled.

It is, therefore, the subversion of an _un_principled (the term is of
the strictest accuracy) ruling class, or aristocracy, and the
obliteration of their peculiar power, that we have to accomplish. This
power consists wholly of certain peculiar interests as masters. To
deprive them of these, is the only possible terminus of the question at
issue. So plain and palpable is the whole question, that we need hardly
say that their whole scheme of government turns upon and clusters about
this interest. For the preservation of this interest, which they thought
touched by the advances of freedom, they rushed into war, and for the
conservation of their power, they base all upon it.

That the general question of property is at all affected by the
obliteration of this interest, is an egregious error. The property, the
possession of which is valid and inviolable, is the product of human
skill, industry, labor, invention, or what not. Nor does it confer
political dominance on its possessor. The slaveholders are the only
class in the nation whose property interest does so; and reciprocally,
the sole object of the maintenance of this interest is the maintenance
of this dominant power. Whether it be or be not criminal to possess it,
is not the point upon which the demand for the abrogation of this
interest turns--at least, there is no legal precedent to so think of
it--but it turns upon the fact that it is ruinous to a republican
system. Not the whole force of republicanism can at once maintain itself
and conserve and cherish _that_; and _if_ it, to a certain ex