by them on coin, seal, and flag; while the ruler of the subjugated land, no longer President, shall be called Overseer.

Of course, fellow-citizens, you are now ready to see that the corruptions by which the present Administration is degraded are the natural offspring of slaveholding immorality. They have all concurred in sustaining the policy of the Oligarchy, and in the case of the Lecompton Constitution in direct effort to fasten Slavery upon a distant Territory, and they are all marked by the effrontery of Slavery. There is also its vulgarity; but this is natural; for is not pretension a fruitful source of vulgarity? and, pray, what is Slavery, but an enormous Pretension? Smollett attributes the peculiar profligacy of England at a particular period to the demoralization of the South Sea Bubble; but what is such a fugitive influence, compared with Slavery, which, indeed, if it were not a crime, might well be called a Bubble? A Government which vindicates the sale of human beings need not hesitate to purchase votes, whether at the polls or in Congress. The two transactions belong to the same family, though unquestionably the last is the least reprehensible.

Fellow-citizens, And now we are brought to the practical bearing of this statement. Beyond all doubt your souls rise in judgment against these things. Beyond all doubt you are saddened at the shadow which they cast over the land. Beyond all doubt you are unwilling to bear any responsibility for their longer continuance. But this is not enough. There must be opposition, active, constant, perpetual; and this is the

foremost duty of patriotism. From the virtuous Reformer, Wycliffe, whose name illumines the earlier period of English history, we learn that men are sharers in evil deeds who from coward dumbness" fail to oppose them. There can be no such coward dumbness now. Happily, a political party is at hand whose purpose is to combine and direct all generous energies for the salvation of the country.

Would you arrest these terrible corruptions, and the disastrous influence from which they spring, involving nothing less than civilization on this continent, the Republican party tells you how, and, in telling you how, vindicates at once its Origin and its Necessity. The work must be done, and there is no other organization by which it can be done. A party with such an origin and such a necessity cannot be for a day, or for this election only. It cannot be less permanent than the hostile influence which it is formed to counteract. Therefore, just so long as the present false theories of Slavery prevail, whether concerning its character, morally, economically, and socially, or concerning its prerogatives under the Constitution, and just so long as the Slave Oligarchy, which is the sleepless and unhesitating agent of Slavery in all its pretensions, continues to exist as a political power, the Republican party must endure. If bad men conspire for Slavery, good men must combine for Freedom; nor can the Holy War be ended, until the Barbarism now dominant in the Republic is overthrown, and the Pagan power is driven from our Jerusalem. And when this triumph. is won, securing the immediate object of our organization, the Republican party will not die, but, purified by long contest with Slavery, and filled with higher

life, it will be lifted to yet other efforts for the good of

man.

At present the work is plain before us. It is simply to elect our candidates: Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, whose ability, so conspicuously shown in his own State, attracted at once the admiration of the whole country, whose character no breath has touched, and whose heart is large enough to embrace the broad Republic and all its people, him you will elect President; and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, whose clear head, firm principles, and ample experience none who sit with him in the Senate Chamber can contest, him you will elect VicePresident. Electing these, we shall put the National Government, at least in its Executive department, openly and actively on the side of Freedom; and this alone will be of incalculable influence, not only in itself, but as harbinger of the Future.

First and foremost, we shall save the Territories from the five-headed Barbarism of Slavery, keeping them in their normal condition, as they came from the hand of God, free, with Freedom written on the soil and engraved on the rock, while the winds whisper it in the trees, the rivers murmur it in their flow, and all Nature echoes it in joy unspeakable.

Next, we shall save the country and the age from that crying infamy, the Slave-Trade, whose opening anew, as now menaced, is but a logical consequence of the new theories of Slavery. If Slavery be the "blessing" it is vaunted, then must the Slave-Trade be beneficent, while they who ply it with fiercest activity take place among the missionaries and saints of humanity.

Next, we shall save the Constitution, at least within. the sphere of Executive influence, from outrage and

perversion; so that the President will no longer lend himself to that wildest pretension of the Slave Oligarchy, as Mr. Buchanan has done, declaring that Slavery is carried under the Constitution into all the Territories, and that it now exists in Kansas as firmly as in South Carolina. As out of nothing can come nothing, so out of the nothing in the Constitution on this subject can be derived no support for this inordinate pretension, which may be best dismissed in that classical similitude by which the ancients rebuked a groundless folly, when they called it ass's wool, or something that does not exist, and plainly said to its author, Asini lanas quæris,-"You are in quest of ass's wool!" 1

Next, we shall help save the Declaration of Independence, now dishonored and disowned in its essential, life-giving truth, the Equality of Men. This transcendent principle, which appears twice at the Creation, first, when God said, "Let us make man in our image," and, secondly, in the Unity of the Race, then divinely established,-which appears again in the New Testament, when it was said, "God, that made the world and all things therein, hath made of one blood all nations of men," which appears again in the primal reason of the world, anterior to all institutions and laws, belongs to those self-evident truths, sometimes called axioms, which no man can question without exposing to question his own intelligence or honesty. As well deny arithmetically that two and two make four, or deny geometrically that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, as deny the axiomatic, self-evident, beaming truth, that all men are equal. As of the sun in the heavens, blind is he who cannot

1 Erasmus, Adagia, Chil. I. Centur. IV. Prov. 79.

perceive it. Of course, this principle, uttered in a Declaration of Rights, is applicable simply to rights; and it is a childish sophism to allege against it the obvious inequalities of form, character, and faculties. As axiom, it admits no exception; for it is the essence of an axiom, whether in geometry or in morals, to be universal. As abstract truth, it is also without exception, according to the essence of such truth. And, finally, as self-evident truth, so announced in the Declaration, it is without exception; for only such truth can be self-evident. Thus, whether axiom, abstract truth, or self-evident truth, it is always universal. In vindicating this principle, the Republican party have a grateful duty, to which they are moved by justice to a much-injured race, excluded from its protection, and by justice also to the Fathers, whose well-chosen words, fit foundation for empire, are turned into mockery. Nor can the madness of the Propagandists be better illustrated than in this assault on the Declaration of Independence, stultifying the Fathers for no other purpose than to clear the way for their five-headed abomination of Compulsory Labor without Wages.

And, finally, we shall help expel the Slave Oligarchy from all its seats of National power, driving it back within the States. This alone is worthy of every effort; for, until this is done, nothing else can be completely done. In vain you seek economy or purity in the National Government, in vain you seek improvement of rivers and harbors, in vain you seek homesteads on the public lands for actual settlers, in vain you seek reform in administration, in vain you seek dignity and peace in our foreign relations, with just sympathy for struggling Freedom everywhere, while