by forbidding the master to emancipate his bondmen
without the consent of the Legislature, and the Legislature without the
consent of the master. Emboldened, but not satisfied, with their success
in every political contest with the people of the free states, the
slaveholders are beginning now to throw off their disguise--to brand
their former notions about the "_evil_, political and moral" of slavery,
as "folly and delusion,"[A]--and as if to "make assurance double sure,"
and defend themselves forever, by territorial power, against the
progress of Free principles and the renovation of the Constitution, they
now demand openly--scorning to conceal that their object is, to _advance
and establish their political power in the country_,--that Texas, a
foreign state, five or six times as large as all New England, with a
Constitution dyed as deep in slavery, as that of Arkansas, shall be
added to the Union.

[Footnote A: Mr. Calhoun is reported, in the National Intelligencer, as
having used these words in a speech delivered in the Senate, the 10th
day of January:--

"Many in the South once believed that it [slavery] was a moral and
political evil; that folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its
true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free
institutions in the world."

Mr. Hammond, formerly a Representative in Congress from South Carolina,
delivered a speech (Feb. 1, 1836) on the question of receiving petitions
for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In answering
those who objected to a slaveholding country, that it was "assimilated
to an aristocracy," he says--"In this they are right. I accept the
terms. _It is a government of the best._ Combining all the advantages,
and possessing but few of the disadvantages, of the aristocracy of the
old world--without fostering, to an unwarrantable extent, the pride, the
exclusiveness, the selfishness, the thirst for sway, the contempt for
the rights of others, which distinguish the nobility of Europe--it gives
us their education, their polish, their munificence, their high honor,
their undaunted spirit. Slavery does indeed create an aristocracy--an
aristocracy of talents, of virtue, of generosity, of courage. In a slave
country, every freeman is an aristocrat. Be he rich or poor, if he does
not possess a single slave, he has been born to all the natural
advantages of the society in which he is placed; and all its honors lie
open before him