of you who believe that the negro is your
equal, and ought to be on an equality with you socially, politically,
and legally, have a right to entertain those opinions, and of course
will vote for Mr. Lincoln.

WM. H. SEWARD,

OF NEW YORK. (BORN 1801, DIED 1872.)

ON THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT;

ROCHESTER, OCTOBER 25, 1858.

THE unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me, show that
you are earnest men--and such a man am I. Let us therefore, at least
for a time, pass all secondary and collateral questions, whether of a
personal or of a general nature, and consider the main subject of the
present canvass. The Democratic party, or, to speak more accurately, the
party which wears that attractive name--is in possession of the Federal
Government. The Republicans propose to dislodge that party, and dismiss
it from its high trust.

The main subject, then, is, whether the Democratic party deserves to
retain the confidence of the American people. In attempting to prove
it unworthy, I think that I am not actuated by prejudices against that
party, or by pre-possessions in favor of its adversary; for I have
learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and
selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in
their motives than in the policies they pursue.

Our country is a theatre, which exhibits, in full operation, two
radically different political systems; the one resting on the basis of
servile or slave labor, the other on voluntary labor of freemen. The
laborers who are enslaved are all negroes, or persons more or less
purely of African derivation. But this is only accidental. The principle
of the system is, that labor in every society, by whomsoever performed,
is necessarily unintellectual, grovelling and base; and that the
laborer, equally for his own good and for the welfare of the State,
ought to be enslaved. The white laboring man, whether native or
foreigner, is not enslaved, only because he cannot, as yet, be reduced
to bondage.

You need not be told now that the slave system is the older of the two,
and that once it was universal. The emancipation of our own ancestors,
Caucasians and Europeans as they were, hardly dates beyond a period of
five hundred years. The great melioration of human society which modern
times exhibit, is mainly due to the incomplete substitution of the
system of voluntary labor for the one of servile labor, which has
already taken place.