tion. Let this be conceded--yet you are no nearer than
before to the conclusion that you possess power which may deal with
other subjects as effectually as with this. Slavery, we are further
told, with some pomp of metaphor, is a canker at the root of all that
is excellent in this republican empire, a pestilent disease that is
snatching the youthful bloom from its cheek, prostrating its honor and
withering its strength. Be it so--yet if you have power to medicine to
it in the way proposed, and in virtue of the diploma which you claim,
you have also power in the distribution of your political alexipharmics
to present the deadliest drugs to every territory that would become a
State, and bid it drink or remain a colony forever. Slavery, we are also
told, is now "rolling onward with a rapid tide towards the boundless
regions of the West," threatening to doom them to sterility and sorrow,
unless some potent voice can say to it,thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther. Slavery engenders pride and indolence in him who commands, and
inflicts intellectual and moral degradation on him who serves. Slavery,
in fine, is unchristian and abominable. Sir, I shall not stop to deny
that slavery is all this and more; but I shall not think myself the less
authorized to deny that it is for you to stay the course of this dark
torrent, by opposing to it a mound raised up by the labors of this
portentous discretion on the domain of others--a mound which you cannot
erect but through the instrumentality of a trespass of no ordinary
kind--not the comparatively innocent trespass that beats down a few
blades of grass which the first kind sun or the next refreshing shower
may cause to spring again--but that which levels with the ground
the lordliest trees of the forest, and claims immortality for the
destruction which it inflicts.

I shall not, I am sure, be told that I exaggerate this power. It has
been admitted here and elsewhere that I do not. But I want no such
concession. It is manifest that as a discretionary power it is
everything or nothing--that its head is in the clouds, or that it is a
mere figment of enthusiastic speculation--that it has no existence, or
that it is an alarming vortex ready to swallow up all such portions of
the sovereignty of an infant State as you may think fit to cast into
it as preparatory to the introduction into the union of the miserable
residue. No man can contradict me when I say, that if you have this
power, you m