her
Northern allies to pronounce the "free and equal" clause of the
preamble to the Declaration of Independence (because it stood in the
way of enslaving men) a manifest absurdity, she has declared, through
the Supreme Court of the United States, that negroes are not men in
the ordinary meaning of the word. To eat dirt is bad enough, but to
find that we have eaten more than was necessary may chance to give us
an indigestion. The slaveholding interest has gone on step by step,
forcing concession after concession, till it needs but little to
secure it forever in the political supremacy of the country. Yield to
its latest demand,--let it mould the evil destiny of the
Territories,--and the thing is done past recall. The next Presidential
Election is to say _Yes_ or _No_.

But we should not regard the mere question of political preponderancy
as of vital consequence, did it not involve a continually increasing
moral degradation on the part of the Nonslaveholding States,--for Free
States they could not be called much longer. Sordid and materialistic
views of the true value and objects of society and government are
professed more and more openly by the leaders of popular outcry, if it
cannot be called public opinion. That side of human nature which it
has been the object of all lawgivers and moralists to repress and
subjugate is flattered and caressed; whatever is profitable is right;
and already the slave-trade, as yielding a greater return on the
capital invested than any other traffic, is lauded as the highest
achievement of human reason and justice. Mr. Hammond has proclaimed
the accession of King Cotton, but he seems to have forgotten that
history is not without examples of kings who have lost their crowns
through the folly and false security of their ministers. It is quite
true that there is a large class of reasoners who would weigh all
questions of right and wrong in the balance of trade; but--we cannot
bring ourselves to believe that it is a wise political economy which
makes cotton by unmaking men, or a far-seeing statesmanship which
looks on an immediate money-profit as a safe equivalent for a beggared
public sentiment. We think Mr. Hammond even a little premature in
proclaiming the new Pretender. The election of November may prove a
Culloden. Whatever its result, it is to settle, for many years to
come, the question whether the American idea is to govern this
continent, whether the Occidental or the Oriental theory