ur material forces; but there is a deeper and truer
method of measuring the power of our cause, and of comprehending its
vitality. This is to be found in its accordance with the best elements
of human nature. It is beyond the power of slavery to annihilate
affinities recognized and established by the Almighty. The slave is
bound to mankind by the powerful and inextricable net-work of human
brotherhood. His voice is the voice of a man, and his cry is the cry
of a man in distress, and man must cease to be man before he can become
insensible to that cry. It is the righteous of the cause--the humanity
of the cause--which constitutes its potency. As one genuine bankbill is
worth more than a thousand counterfeits, so is one man, with right on
his side, worth more than a thousand in the wrong. "One may chase a
thousand, and put ten thousand to flight." It is, therefore, upon the
goodness of our cause, more than upon all other auxiliaries, that we
depend for its final triumph.

Another source of congratulations is the fact that, amid all the efforts
made by the church, the government, and the people at large, to stay
the onward progress of this movement, its course has been onward, steady,
straight, unshaken, and unchecked from the beginning. Slavery has
gained victories large and numerous; but never as against this
movement--against a temporizing policy, and against northern timidity,
the slave power has been victorious; but against the spread and
prevalence in the country, of a spirit of resistance to its aggression,
and of sentiments favorable to its entire overthrow, it has yet
accomplished nothing. Every measure, yet devised and executed, having
for its object the suppression{369} of anti-slavery, has been as idle
and fruitless as pouring oil to extinguish fire. A general rejoicing
took place on the passage of "the compromise measures" of 1850. Those
measures were called peace measures, and were afterward termed by both
the great parties of the country, as well as by leading statesmen, a
final settlement of the whole question of slavery; but experience has
laughed to scorn the wisdom of pro-slavery statesmen; and their final
settlement of agitation seems to be the final revival, on a broader
and grander scale than ever before, of the question which they vainly
attempted to suppress forever. The fugitive slave bill has especially
been of positive service to the anti-slavery movement. It has
illustrated before all the people