17 nize the South. This is why it was impossible (impossible, I repeat the word) not to show respect to your blockade ; not to endure patiently for four years the scarcity of cotton ; not to accept the duration of the struggle ; and not to stifle the faint attempts at intervention. Oh, preserve your principles, do not cast away your buckler ! Be not too scheming, I entreat vou ; content your- selves with being just, simply just, frankly just. Men are never mistaken in being just; they are always mistaken in not being so. It is something for a politician to have conscience on his side, and to count on the blessing of God. Now, I ask, is there a clearer question of conscience than that to which you are now called upon to give your attention ? We, who live at a distance from America, and who, strangers to the discussion of details, see only the great phases of your debates •—we cannot even conceive the possibility of hesitation in such a matter. Your negroes, who have ceased to be slaves, are men. This word expresses everything ; they are entitled to the position which your laws make for men. “ It is in vain to say that this is the country of the white man ; it is the country of man.” This admirable saying of Mr. Sumner seems to me to sum up the question. Where find in your constitution the distinction between the white man and the black man ? Where find it in the conscience and the Gospel ? AVill your democracy invent an aristocracy of the skin ? The saying of Mr. Sumner reminds me of another not less worthy of admiration. “ Our fellow-citizens,” you exclaimed the other day. On that day, Mr. President, you framed in advance the bill which will secure the rights of the colored race. Ou that day, yielding to the impulse of a generous heart, yielding to the evidence of justice, imprudent through that imprudence which is prudence itself, walking first in the way in which you will not walk alone, in which you are followed at this time by the sympathies of the whole world, you proclaimed once more the noble American policy, the policy of principle. 3
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