10 tion and tenderness in debate are exhibited on your side of the great argument than our own? We all learned our polemics, as well as our principles, from a common master. We are sure that we do not, on our side, exceed his lessons and example. . Thomas Jefferson addressed Dr. Price, an Englishman, concerning his treatise on emancipation in America, in this fashion; “ Southward of the Chesapeake, your book will find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the subject of slavery. From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeake, the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice; a minority which, for weight, and worth of character, preponderates against the greater number who have not the courage to divest their families of a property which, however, keeps, their consciences unquiet. Northward of the Chesapeake, you may find here and there an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find here and there a robber or a murderer ; but in no greater number.”........................................... “This (Virginia) is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression—a conflict where the sacred side is gaining daily new recruits from the influx into office of young men, grown and growing up.” . “ Be not, then, discouraged. What you have written will do a great deal of good; and could you still trouble yourself about our welfare, no man is more able to help the laboring side.” You see, sir, that whether we go for or against slavery anywhere, we must follow southern guides. You may change your pi lots with the winds or the currents ; but we, whose nativity, reckoned under the North Star, has rendered us somewhat superstitious, must be excused for constancy in following the guidance of those who framed the national ship and gave us the chart for its noble voyage. A profound respect and friendly regard for the Vice-President of the United States has induced me to weigh carefully the testimony he has given on the subject of the hostility against the South imputed to the Republican party, as derived from the relations of the representatives of the two parties at this capital. He says that he has seen here in the representatives of the lower southern States a most resolute and earnest spirit of resistance to the Republican party ; that he perceives a sensible loss of that spirit of brotherhood and that feeling of loyalty, together with that love for a common country, which are at last the surest cement of the Union; so that, in the present unhappy condition of affairs, he is almost tempted to exclaim, that we are dissolving week by week and month by month; that the threads are gradually fretting themselves asunder; and a stranger might suppose that the Executive of the United States was the President of two hostile Republics. It is not for me to raise a doubt upon the correctness of this dark picture, so far as the southern groups upon the canvas are concerned, but I must be indulged in the opinion that I can pronounce as accurately concerning the northern or Republican representatives here as any one. I know their public haunts and their private ways. We are not a hostile Republic, or representatives of one. We confer together, but only as the organs of every party do, and must do in a political system which obliges us to act sometimes as partisans, while it requires us always to be patriots and statesmen. Differences of opinion, even on the subject of slavery, with us are political, not social or personal differences. There is not one disunionist or disloyalist among us all. We are altogether unconscious of any process of dissolution going on among us or around us. We have never been more patient, never loved the representatives of other sections more than now. We bear the same testimony for the people around its here, who, though in the very center where the bolt of disunion must fall first and be most fearful in its effects, seemed never less disturbed than now. We bear the same testimony for all the districts and States we represent. The people of the North are not enemies, but friends and brethren of the South, faithful and true as in the days when death has dealt his arrows promiscuously among them on common battle-fields of freedom. We will not suffer ourselves hereto dwell on any evidences of a different temper in tire South ; but we shall be content with expressing our belief that hostility that is not designedly provoked, and that cannot provoke retaliation, is an anomaly that must be traced to casual excitements, which cannot perpetuate alienation. A canvass for a presidential election, in some respects more important, perhaps, than any since 1800, has recently begun. The House of Representatives was to be organized by a majority, while no party could cast more than a plurality of votes. The gloom of the late tragedy in Virginia rested on the Capitol from the day when Congress assembled. While the
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