9 themselves—every mother’s Son of them. But, again, alas for the poor union, and for the infallibility of political nostrum venders I in less than four years from this perfect, this “ final ” recovery, the union was found again in hysterics. There was discovered a dreadful “ tender spot ” at the junction of the slave state of Missouri and the free territory of Kansas. The democratic faculty of political quacks was hurriedly summoned. What in the world could be the matter with the union now ? Well, it was found by them to be dying of a poison called “ Missouri compromise,” administered by the doctors in charge of her in 1820. This was the unanimous opinion of the doctors. The union, with that Missouri compromise, had taken an over dose of freedom, and it must be extracted from her system, as the only and the infallible remedy. Yes, sir; the slave democracy have, for all the diseases of the union, one, and only one, remedy ; and that is, to bleed her of every drop of freedom left in her veins. This, sir, is the course of surgery prescribed and administered by the democratic doctors for a union nursed in the lap, and nurtured at the bosom of freedom! Feed her with more slavery, more slave states, more slave territory; and, when you cease to have enough of these articles on hand, why, then, steal more from your neighbor nations, after the prescription of the Ostend conference of democratic doctors, of which Mr. Buchanan, the nominee of the slave democracy for the presidency, was the acknowledged head, and Mr. Sould, of Louisiana, the fitting tail. Steal it, sir, with a relish. Go at it, sir, wolf and lamb fashion. Says the wolf, drinking in the stream, to th'e lamb, drinking in the same stream, below the wolf, “ Sir, if your drinking in the stream below me does seriously endanger the riling of the water where I am drinking, then, by every law, human and divine, I shall be justified in wresting you from the brook;” and, so saying, seizes and devours the lamb. Go at it wolf fashion, 0 »lave democracy, and take Cuba; it will be needed in a little while as medjcine for a union sick of too much freedom and too little slavery. Here is the warrant, sir, under the hands of your slave democratic casuists and candidate. “ Does Cuba in the possession of Spain seri- ‘ ously endanger our internal peace and the existence of our cherished union? Should this ‘ question be answered in the affirmative, then by ‘ every law, human and divine, we shall be jus- 1 tified in wresting it from Spain, if we possess the ‘ power; and this upon the very same principle ‘ that would justify an individual in tearing down : the burning house of his neighbor, if there were ‘ no other means of preventing the flames from ‘ destroying his own home. Under such circum- ‘ stances, we ought neither to count the cost nor ‘ regard the odds which Spain might enlist against ‘ us. We forbear to enter into the question, 1 whether the present condition of the island ■ would justify such a measure. We should, how- ‘ ever, be recreant to our duty, be unworthy of our ‘ gallant forefathers, and commit base treason ‘ against our posterity, should we permit Cuba to ‘ be Africanized, and become a second St. Do- 1 mingo, with all its attendant horrors to the ' ‘ white race, and suffer the flames to extend to our ‘ own neighboring shores, seriously to endanger, ‘ or actually to consume, the fair fabric of our * union. We hear that the course and current ‘ of events are rapidly tending toward such a ‘ catastrophe. * * * « James Buchanan. “ John Y. Mason. “ Pibrre Soule. “MJz La Chapelle, October 18, 1854.” Oh yes, we will need Cuba ; we do need it now ; and Central America, why we shall need that by the time we can get it, and that will be as soon as Walker and his filibusters shall put slavery fairly under way there. Have it! why not have it when such a doctor of divinity as “ Old Buck ” says we are entitled to it by divine law ? There, Mr. Chairman, is your president, who will be his own chaplain, and do his own preying. But, Mr. Chairman, this is getting slightly, but no more than that, in advance of the “ wagon.” Let us return to the handiwork of the slave democracy for the advent of another dispensation of harmony—another “finality" to succeed the old and worn out “finality” of 1850. The scriptures say, that the “sinner an hundred years old shall be accursed; ” but a slave democratic “ finality ” is in as sad a plight, at four years old, as the sinner at “ an hundred.” So they cursed their old “finality” of 1850, and introduced another in 1854, by the repeal of the Missouri compromise ; which, in the short period of two years, has deserved and received more cursing, by friends and foes, than it of 1850, or all its predecessors put together. Indeed, this last seems to have had a bad effect even according to the democratic doctors themselves, inasmuch as it was a surfeit of slavery, which has resulted in the “ black (republican) vomit.” But seriously, Mr. Chairman, what I have spoken ironically is nevertheless, not an unfaithful picture of our present condition as a nation,' under the wicked and imbecile attempt of the slaveholders and the slave democracy, to strengthen the institutions of freedom, by nursing and feeding them on the garbage of human bondage. God knows, Mr. Chairman, that I desire, as earnestly as human nature can long for any earthly blessing, the perpetuity of the union of these states, just so long as the union shall subserve the ends for which our fathers formed it; but my convictions, that the accumulated perversions of those ends and objects, will if repeated, at no distant period, subvert the union, are as strong and earnest as my desires for its perpetuity. Sir, I have no faith in the conservative efficacy of anything for states and nations, but the healing virtues of justice, truth, and liberty. Mr. Chairman, it was my design, before resuming my seat, to say something on the causes which have led to the disgraceful state of things in Kansas—a state so repugnant to every sentiment of national pride, to say nothing of justice, peace, or even common decency ? Sir, there is involved in these Kansas troubles, something low, vulgar, dirty, savoring of the fish-market, on the part of the administration, mingled in the causes and accomplishments of these shameful scenes— much, sir, of the low, disgusting arrogance of the
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