this sentiment, in his description of the reception of Satan by his subject fiends, on his return from the ruin of our first parents. Satan is described as addressing, with regal pomp, the infernal sanhedrim, and giving them a narration of his adventures in paradise, and his triumph, and its consequents at some unset future period: “I am to bruise his heel; His seed (wften is not set) shall bruise my head. A world, who would hot purchase with a bruise, Or much more grievous pain? Ye have th’ account Of my performance: what remains, ye gods,— But up, and enter now into full bliss? So having said, awhile he stood expecting Their universal shout and high applause To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears On all sides, from innumerable tongues, A dismal, universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn.” ----------“Thus was th’ applause they meant Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame, Cast on themselves from their own mouths.” It seems to me, sir, that if gentlemen from the free states, who have been candidates or aspirants for the presidency, or who may become such hereafter, would reflect a little upon the fortunes of those who have tried the experiment, cannot but be convinced, that a too eager subserviency to the interests of the slavery extensionists, is not the surest guarantee of success. Such subserviency is treachery to the interests of the people of the free states, and the people of those states see and understand this much more clearly than those time-servers and tricksters imagine. No man at the north, however great his administrative talent, or however triumphant his popularity for the time, can be guilty of an open betrayal of the interest of freedom on any pretence however plausible, without a ruinous blow to his popularity with his free-state constituency. There are too many common schools, too many newspapers read, too many intelligent and well-read men among the laboring masses, not to render a double-dealing and ruinous policy on the question of slavery extension, fatal to the aspirations of such politicians. The living wrecks of such navigators, are too numerously strewed along the beach of the political sea, not to be a warning to the whole crew, officers as well as mariners. It would be discourteous in me to name them; but I would invite you to run over, in your mind, the number of such unfortunates since 1844, inclusive. The task of Sisyphus was a hard one ; but the task of a dough-face, seeking the presidency, is little, if any less onerous. If he makes shift to roll his stone up the slave-state side of the hill, down it rolls on the free-state side; and so vice, versa. If his truckling to the slave power, has fitted him for the uses of the slavery propagandists, he is ruined with the friends of freedom; and if ruined with these, the slaveholders cannot use him, however much they may desire to do so. This is now the case with the present incumbent of the presidential office. It is the case with every prominent free-state aspirant to that office in the ranks of the slave democracy, or of the national Americans, as they ironically style themselves ; and “ killed by an over dose of slavery propagandism,” may be justly written over the political grave of each of them, as a most truthful and appropriate epitaph. Let all politicians of uncracked reputation in the free states, be warned by these examples, and remember the reception of Satan, even among his own fallen crew; for the reception of the pro-slavery politician of the free states, with his slaveholding friends, is as real an ordination of Providence, in the course of nature, as are the hisses with which Satan was received by his fallen crew, according to the paintings of the poet’s imagination, in the special awards of Divine justice.
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