extension of a system which makes the mass of the population an
element of danger and weakness in the body politic, as its advocates
admit by their scheme for a foreign protectorate of their proposed
independent organization,--a system which renders public education
impossible, exhausts the soil, necessitates sparseness of population,
and demoralizes the governing classes.[4]

The ethical aspects of Slavery are not and cannot be the subject of
consideration with any party which proposes to act under the
Constitution of the United States. Nor are they called upon to
consider its ethnological aspect. Their concern with it is confined
to the domain of politics, and they are not called to the discussion
of abstract principles, but of practical measures. The question,
even in its political aspect, is one which goes to the very
foundation of our theories and our institutions. It is simply,
--Shall the course of the Republic be so directed as to subserve the
interests of aristocracy or of democracy? Shall our Territories be
occupied by lord and serf, or by intelligent freemen?--by laborers
who are owned, or by men who own themselves? The Republican Party
has no need of appealing to prejudice or passion. In this case,
there is a meaning in the phrase, Manifest Destiny. America is to be
the land of the workers, the country where, of all others, the
intelligent brain and skilled hand of the mechanic, and the patient
labor of those who till their own fields, are to stand them in
greatest stead. We are to inaugurate and carry on the new system
which makes Man of more value than Property, which will one day put
the living value of industry above the dead value of capital. Our
republic was not born under Cancer, to go backward. Perhaps we do
not like the prospect? Perhaps we love the picturesque charm with
which novelists and poets have invested the old feudal order of
things? That is not the question. This New World of ours is to be
the world of great workers and small estates. The freemen whose
capital is their two hands must inevitably become hostile to a system
clumsy and barbarous like that of Slavery, which only carries to its
last result the pitiless logic of selfishness, sure at last to
subject the toil of the many to the irresponsible power of the few.

It may temporarily avail the Party of Slavery-Extension to announce
itself as the party of the white man, of the sacredness of property,
and the obligation of law; it may d