Presidential Candidates:. David W. Bartlett

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СКАЧАТЬ and is a despotism. Most of the other European states have abolished slavery, and adopted the system of free labor. It was the antagonistic political tendencies of the two systems which the first Napoleon was contemplating when he predicted that Europe would ultimately be either all Cossack or all Republican. Never did human sagacity utter a more pregnant truth. The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous, but they are more than incongruous, they are incompatible. They never have permanently existed together in one country, and they never can. It would be easy to demonstrate this impossibility, from the irreconcilable contrast between their great principles and characteristics. But the experience of mankind has conclusively established it. Slavery, as I have already intimated, existed in every state in Europe. Free labor has supplanted it everywhere except in Russia and Turkey. State necessities, developed in modern times, are now obliging even those two nations to encourage and employ free labor; and already, despotic as they are, we find them engaged in abolishing slavery. In the United States, slavery came into collision with free labor at the close of the last century, and fell before it in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, but triumphed over it effectually, and excluded it for a period yet undetermined, from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Indeed, so incompatible are the two systems, that every new State which is organized within our ever-extending domain makes its first political act a choice of the one and an exclusion of the other, even at the cost of civil war, if necessary. The slave States, without law, at the last national election, successfully forbade, within their own limits, even the casting of votes for a candidate for President of the United States supposed to be favorable to the establishment of the free-labor system in the new States.

      "Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different States, but side by side within the American Union. This has happened because the Union is a confederation of States. But in another aspect, the United States constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling the States out to their very borders, together with a new and extended net-work of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact, and collision results.

      "Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men. It is the failure to apprehend this great truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at final compromise between the slave and free States, and it is the existence of this great fact that renders all such pretended compromises, when made, vain and ephemeral. Startling as this saying may appear to you, fellow-citizens, it is by no means an original or even a modern one. Our forefathers knew it to be true, and unanimously acted upon it when they framed the Constitution of the United States. They regarded the existence of the servile system in so many of the States with sorrow and shame, which they openly confessed, and they looked upon the collision between them, which was then just revealing itself, and which we are now accustomed to deplore, with favor and hope. They knew that either the one or the other system must exclusively prevail.

      "Unlike too many of those who in modern times invoke their authority, they had a choice between the two. They preferred the system of free labor, and they determined to organize the Government, and so to direct its activity, that that system should surely and certainly prevail. For this purpose, and no other, they based the whole structure of government broadly on the principle that all men are created equal, and therefore free – little dreaming that within the short period of one hundred years, their descendants would bear to be told by any orator, however popular, that the utterance of that principle was merely a rhetorical rhapsody; or by any judge, however venerated, that it was attended by mental reservations, which render it hypocritical and false. By the ordinance of 1787, they dedicated all the national domain not yet polluted by slavery to free labor immediately, thenceforth and forever, while by the new Constitution and laws they invited foreign free labor from all lands under the sun, and interdicted the importation of African slave labor, at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances whatsoever. It is true that they necessarily and wisely modified this policy of freedom by leaving it to the several States, affected as they were by differing circumstances, to abolish slavery in their own way, and at their own pleasure, instead of confiding that duty to Congress, and that they secured to the slave States, while yet retaining the system of slavery, a three-fifths representation of slaves in the Federal Government, until they should find themselves able to relinquish it with safety. But the very nature of these modifications fortifies my position that the fathers knew that the two systems could not endure within the Union, and expected that within a short period slavery would disappear forever. Moreover, in order that these modifications might not altogether defeat their grand design of a republic maintaining universal equality, they provided that two-thirds of the States might amend the Constitution.

      "It remains to say on this point only one word, to guard against misapprehension. If these States are to again become universally slaveholding, I do not pretend to say with what violations of the Constitution that end shall be accomplished. On the other hand, while I do confidently believe and hope that my country will yet become a land of universal freedom, I do not expect that it will be made so otherwise than through the action of the several States coöperating with the Federal Government, and all acting in strict conformity with their respective Constitutions."

      In a speech in the Senate, last spring, March 2, 1859, Mr. Seward said – he was speaking of the "Expenses and Revenues" —

      "We are for free trade to a practical extent, and we all are in favor of a judicious tariff. The exigency of this debate does not require me to survey the whole range of productive industry of the country, and to suggest a comparative system of imposts adjusted to them all. It would be labor lost to do so; for, as I have already said, it is in the House of Representatives, and not here, that the act originating any revision of the tariff must be introduced, and perfected, at least in degree. But I can say, with entire freedom, that it would present no ground of objection, in my judgment, if such a bill should be so constructed as to favor and encourage the mining and manufacture of iron. I select and distinguish this great interest, because I think that the disasters which have overtaken the National Treasury and have crushed the prosperity of the country, have resulted from neglect and improvidence in regard to it. We have been engaged, as most other civilized states have been engaged, during the last fifteen or twenty years, in adopting the great invention of railroads, or, as the Frenchmen accurately describe them, iron roads, and bringing it into universal use. If we could only have understood ourselves in the beginning of this period, and adhered persistently throughout to just convictions then formed, we should have so discriminated in our revenue system as to have made this great enterprise work out an establishment of the iron manufacture in this country, so as to derive from it our chief supplies. But the country has not been willing to look steadily to that ultimate interest. It has asked always the cheapest iron that could be gotten, and, of course, has demanded that the imposts should be fixed at the lowest possible rates. So the protection afforded by the tariff of 1846 gave place to a lower protection in 1857; and it has not been without much difficulty that at times Congress has been stayed from remitting all duties on foreign manufactures of railroad iron. The Legislatures of the States, acting on the same erroneous principles, have authorized combinations and associations on doubtful principles to force forward the same precipitancy of action. Loans of the credit of States, of counties, cities, and even towns, have been authorized, to furnish capital to railroad corporations, and at the same time they have been continually allowed to borrow money, at usurious and ruinous rates of interest. Securities thus obtained, doubted and comparatively valueless СКАЧАТЬ