been held sacred. In that stronghold they have advocates, who dare to proclaim, in the face of their countrymen, that a fanatical dogma, assumed without proof, and sustained without argument, is of superior authority to that Constitution they have sworn to support. At the head of these new lights, or blue lights, is a senator from the State of New-York, who, being our fellow-citizen, we feel bound to give a passing notice, as one of his constituents.

This singular example of the inextricable caprices of fortune, we take to be one of the most dangerous of the more diminutive race of insects that ever buzzed about in a tainted political atmosphere; for he is held in such utter contempt by all honest men, that no notice is taken of him until his sting is felt. He is barely qualified to play second fiddle in a concert of third-rate demagogues, and the only way in which he can acquire distinction is by becoming the tool of greater demagogues than himself. Some years ago, after disgracing the state as its chief magistrate, he suddenly found his level in the lowest depths of oblivion or insignificance, and was only quoted, if quoted at all, as one of those empty bladders which fortune sometimes amuses herself with, by tossing to the top of her wheel, and laughing to see it tumble down again by its own want of momentum.

But though this distinguished representative of the Empire State has a great alacrity in sinking, he has a still greater alacrity in rising, by virtue of his extraordinary lightness. Nor is any spectacle more common in this enlightened country than that of a swindler-provided it be on a great scale-after his offences have become a little rusted by time, suddenly emerging from the depths of infamy, to become an object of popular favor or executive patronage. Thus has it happened to our illustrious senator. The mud has lately been stirred at the very bottom of the pool; and he who went down a mutilated tadpole, has come up a full-grown bullfrog, bellowing louder than he did when, as a state senator, he condescended to become the agent of a principal whose claim was to be decided by himself and his brother members. The wisdom and patriotism of our Legislature have sent him as their peculiar representative in the Senate of the United States, and probably he is fully adequate to that stupendous responsibility. Since then, his only public exploit has been a speech, of which we shall say nothing, except that it would disgrace any man-but himself. The reader, we hope, will pardon us for thus turning aside a moment, to do justice to a very small man-so small, that his smallness is unspeakably inexpressible-and who, by no possibility, can ever become great in any other sense but that of being stupendously contemptible. It is a received maxim, that the head of any class or profession must necessarily be more or less distinguished; and the honorable senator from Africa-we beg pardon, New-York-is undoubtedly chief of the illustrious band of dealers in "small potatoes." As such he is fairly entitled to a passing notice. But to descend from this high elevation to my more humble task.

Fanaticism, perhaps, never assumed a more dangerous form than that it now presents in the United States. It is waging a direct, inveterate warfare against the Constitution and the Union. It asserts principles which, if carried out in their full extent, will unquestionably bring about -if not now, at least at no distant period-a dissolution of that Union, followed by all its fatal consequences. Its principles have a direct tend

ency to civil and servile war-to rapine, murder, and pollution. Here they are. Let the reader pause, reflect, and see to what they inevitably lead. First. "We maintain, that every American citizen who retains a single human being in involuntary bondage, is, according to Scripture, a manstealer" "that the slaves ought to be instantly set free;" "that all those laws now in force, admitting the right of slavery, are, before God, utterly null and void;"" that no compensation should be allowed to the planters for the manumission of their slaves." And they have denounced the Colonization Society as "a cheat and a hypocrite,' " for no other reason than that it offers a rational and practical plan for doing what they themselves are attempting to do by means destructive to the Constitution and the Union. But they have not stopped here. They have repeatedly, in their conventions, periodicals and pulpits, declared, "We will give the Union for the abolition of slavery, if nothing else will gain it ;" and, to finish their creed, have adopted, as one of their great fundamental dogmas, "that the condition of slavery absolves us from all the obligations of mankind."

The practical application of this principle would be productive of consequences that might make even fanaticism shudder. A being absolved from all the obligations of mankind, is a wild beast of prey let loose on society. Freed from all the restraints of morality and religion by the condition of slavery, he holds no fealty to the laws of God or man; he has a natural, inalienable right to do wrong-to set fire to his master's house; plunder his property; pollute his wife and daughters; rob them, and murder them in short, run a-muck against all mankind. Such are the doctrines of these exclusive "friends of the entire human race." To this condition would our brethren of the South, of our own color and race, whose forefathers had their full share in securing to the people of the North the blessings they enjoy,-to this condition would they be reduced by the practical application of this detestable dogma.

It is but the other day that a negro emissary of the abolitionists, commonly known as "Orator Douglas," was listened to at a meeting at Sy racuse, by an assemblage of white men, and unsexed female devotees of amalgamation, while insolently addressing them as follows:-"I believe the slaves would be more than a match for their enslavers, if left to themselves. Let the Union, then, be dissolved. I wish to see it dissolved. I welcome the bolt, be it from heaven or from hell, that shall shiver it to pieces." These are the doctrines with which the speeches, sermons, and writings of the abolitionists teem. They are taught to our children; they are imbibed with the mother's first nutriment, and earliest lessons; for it is to the women of this country such principles are addressed; it is by the aid of their powerful influence, as wives and mothers, that these dangerous incendiaries expect to succeed, in sapping the Constitution, disrupting the Union, and establishing a hierarchy, by substituting their own interpretations of Scripture in place of the authority of laws and constitutions, and asserting the superiority of a fanatical dogma over them both.

Well aware of the virtues and weaknesses of women; their tenderness

See Manifesto of the National Anti-Slavery Society, at its first organization in Philadelphia.

of heart; their proneness to be led away by the feelings of the moment; their quick sympathies for human suffering, and the facility with which they may be deceived by artful, designing men; it is among them that they sow their seed, and reap their most exuberant harvests. They have accordingly enticed them from the family fold, and those sacred duties imposed upon them by God and nature, to instill into their hearts and minds principles at war with society, and fatal to the peace of the domestic hearth, as well as the repose of society. A great majority of these reformers who sign petitions to Congress, insulting the feelings, and blackening the character of the inhabitants of fifteen States, are females— wives and daughters, who, with all due respect to the sex, might much better be at home, attending to their domestic duties, and presiding over the morality of the parental board, than acting the Quixotte in petticoats, and studying the beauties of amalgamation.

Among the signers of those petitions to dissolve the Union, presented by men who are sworn to uphold it, are crowds of little children, who are thus betimes imbued with principles directly calculated to undermine our civil and political institutions, and, in fact, to upset the entire frame of society, by innovations on the long-established principles of social organization. These friends of the entire human race go to the fountain head-they dig at the root. Our children are taught by their mothers at home, and their teachers abroad, who in the North and East are almost all tinctured with abolitionism, that they must give the Union for the abolition of slavery-to "welcome the bolt, be it from heaven or from hell, that shall shiver it to pieces;" and that the condition of slavery absolves us from all the obligations of mankind.*

This is no idle declamation--no shower of arrows shot at random. We appeal to the declarations of fanaticism just quoted; and we ask whether those by whom they are made, and those by whom they are sanctioned, are not enemies to the laws, the Constitution, and the Union; and whether in declaring that the condition of slavery absolves us from all the obligations of mankind, they do not assert a principle, which, if carried out in its consequences, will cut up by the roots the entire system of social organization in one half the States of this Union, and inevitably produce all the multiplied horrors of a servile war? We ask our countrymen of the North, whether they will condescend to the deep humility of becoming the instruments and abettors of this conspiracy of apostatized freemen, and ignorant, revengeful slaves?

One of the worst and most revolting features in this conspiracy of fanaticism, is its foreign origin. It was originally imported from England, and is beyond doubt, in a great measure, supported by British influence, if not British money. It was immediately after the return of the emissaries of the abolitionists from a great meeting in London, where Sir Robert Peel figured side by side with Daniel O'Connell, that the Colonization Society was denounced as a cheat and a hypocrite. This was shortly followed by the organization of a National Anti-Slavery Society, which began its exploits with a declaration of interminable and exterminating war against the people of the South, the recognized rights of property, the rights of the States, and the sanctity of the Constitution. The name of the living God was blasphemed to sanction the violation of His

It is to this influence, no doubt, Senator Hale alluded in the debate on Mr. Clay's amendments to Benton's resolutions.

attributes, and the authority of His sacred word prostituted to purposes equally at war with both.

The movements of the abolitionists on either side of the Atlantic, are simultaneous-they are pulled by the same wires; and it is evident that a close and intimate union subsists between them. The American fanatics are little better than cats-paws of British state policy. The cue is taken from the latter; every movement in England is followed here with implicit subserviency, and every sentiment echoed with most abject servility. They handle the same tools, play into each other's hands; and whether aware of it or not, the American fanatics are instruments of the British government, in bringing about a separation of this confederacy, which, if accomplished, will rid England of her only dangerous rival in commerce and naval power; while, at the same time, it removes from the contemplation of her half-starved peasant paupers and operatives, an object so dangerous to the permanency of that system, which has made so many millions of industrious, hard-working beggars. That this is the key to British Government sympathy for African wrongs, is proved by its utter indifference to the devastations of India, and the sufferings of Ireland; by tolerating in its eastern empire, among the lowest caste of Hindoos, a species of slavery far more oppressive and degrading than that of our Southern States; by obstinately resisting all attempts to relax that system of extravagant expenditure, which entails on the people a burden of taxation that robs them of the very necessaries of life; by expelling the negroes of New-Zealand from their country,* and cutting their throats at the Cape of Good Hope for nobody knows what, while redressing their wrongs in America.t

Can any rational man believe, for a single moment, that a government so regardless of the rights and happiness of the human race everywhere else should feel any real sympathy for them in the United States? Assuredly not. The philanthropy of the British government is political philanthropy an engine of state. The direction it has taken of late years is peculiarly leveled at the United States, and has a two-fold object. The result of the operation of free institutions, as exhibited in the unexampled growth and prosperity of this great confederation of empires, is the bugbear of despotism. It makes the old dry bones of superannuated abuses rattle in their coffins, and the spectre of liberty haunts them in their sleep. The example has become contagious, and nothing can save the crumbling edifices of despotic power from being prostrated by the earthquake of popular indignation, but either to remove such a dangerous spectacle from the contemplation of the people, by dividing and distracting this auspicious Union, or so distorting its features and blackening its character, that it will no longer be the pillar of fire in the great desert of the world, to guide mankind from the house of bondage to the land flowing with milk and honey.

Hence the simulated sympathy, not only of the British government, but of all European despots, for the African slave. They well know that the institution of slavery is the weak point of our confederation, and that in which it may be most successfully assailed. They are aware that it is here the fortress is most vulnerable, and it is here they have pointed their batteries. The British government, as the one most deeply interested in this conspiracy, has exerted all the influence of its press and its position

See Darwin's Journal.

+ See English Public Despatches.

in working on the sympathies of the white slaves of Europe, until they seem almost to have lost sight of their own bondage, in pity for that of the African. The imperial despots of Russia and Austria, while wading knee-deep in the blood of the Hungarians, and crushing the liberties of Europe under the hoofs of their whiskered Pandonrs and Cossacks, are among the most zealous of abolitionists. There is nothing so pleases them as the doctrine of amalgamation, which, if brought into practical operation, would so debase the free white citizens of the United States, that they would become unworthy of freedom, and incapable of its enjoyment. The great bugbear would speedily vanish, and despotism sleep in peace.

This, if we do not greatly err, is the true secret of that extraordinary sympathy for African wrongs, in the hearts of those who are callous to the wrongs of the natives of every other country. It is one of the most cunning devices of despotism to enslave one race of mankind, while displaying such zeal for the emancipation of another. England is the head and front of this communion of hypocrisy. Her stake in the game is greater than that of any other power; for if the United States retain intact their bond of union a few years longer, the trident of the ocean will drop from her hand, and the sceptre depart from Judah for ever. Hence, it is her policy to sow the seeds of disunion, and, by means of sectional dissensions, either bring about a separation of the states, or so weaken the ties that bind them together, that they will never again act in harmonious concert. The attempt to arrest the destinies of the United States by open force has signally failed heretofore, and become hopeless in future. British arms have been tried in vain, and British philanthropy is now our most dangerous enemy. The "protectorate" of the puissant King of the Mosquitoes is a mask for arresting the construction of the canal across the Isthmus, so vitally connected with the interests of this Republic; and sympathy for African wrongs, the pretext for aiming a deadly blow, which menaces its very existence. A comparatively small sum of money, judiciously distributed, for the purpose of enabling the abolitionists to pay the expenses of their missionaries to London meetings and domestic conventions, setting up papers and periodicals, to foment sectional prejudices and denounce the Constitution; and maintaining itinerant lecturers, to undermine the very foundations of society, and inculcate on our wives and daughters the beauties of amalgamation,-all this may be done at one hundredth part of the expense of a naval or military expedition. The plan is admirable; "the plot is an excellent plot ;" and if my Lord Palmerston, or the pious old ladies of England, could only manage to enlist our transcendental senator, as the Guy Fawkes, to set fire to the train, there can scarcely be a doubt that Senate, Congress and Executive, the Capitol and the White House, would all be blown "sky high," as my friend John Randolph used to say. But it is feared the senator is too scrupulous and too incorruptible. He may not stickle at undertaking an agency as attorney in a matter on which he is to decide as a legislator; or he may stretch his conscience so far as to violate his oath to support the Constitution. But these are small matters to a great man, who soars above all legal and constitutional restraints, and who is accountable to the great tribunal of his conscience alone. Many people think he might be bought dog-cheap; but, for my part, I hardly believe he would sell himself, unless he could do it with a safe conscience—that is, in perfect safety.