5 monopoly of the means of education, it appropriates to itself the internal government of those States, and their influence beyond their borders. Small as are its comparative numbers, it takes its place in the national councils, as the representative of the aggregate weight of those States. With this weight, and with the skill derived from making politics its study and practice, it comes as a seller into the market of the national patronage—with the retaining fees of fortunes for the basely sordid, and promotion for the basely aspiring. What wonder that, with such advantages, it should find willing and capable tools beyond its own domain? What wonder that it should find means to perplex the simple, and beguile and soothe the good, as well as to enlist and use the selfish? What wonder that it should be able to play off * parties against each other, and take to itself effectually the balance of power, and the lion’s share of the prizes at stake? * The Presidency of 1841—’5 is reckoned in both columns, once for President Harrison’s election, and once for President Tyler’s term of office. But why reason about it? Look at the facts. I have a statement before me, which, if not punctiliously exact, is not far from the truth; and it runs as ..follows: From non-slaveholding States. From slaveholding States. Presidents * - - - -4 terms - - 12 terms. Judges of the Supreme Court - 11 - -17 Attorney Generals - - - 5 - - 14 Speakers of the House - - 11 - - 21 Presidents of the Senate, pro tem. - 16 - -^61 Foreign Ministers - - - 54 - - 80 While the proportion of cabinet ministers and of high naval and military officers has .been something like the same. Such is the disproportion in the distribution of offices of emolument and honor, to correspond to a proportion of voters, on the favored side, of one to twenty or thirty of the whole vote. No matter for the emolument—I speak for the great mass of the people of the free States, the honest people, who are not struggling for the “ spoils”—we have other avenues to gain—the ways of industry and of frugality, which we prefer. No matter for the honor. We can find that in the paths of science and letters, in the labors of philanthropy and of public enterprise, and in the offices of a blameless and useful private life. But this accumulation of public offices in one class of hands represents the accumulation of Political Power, and affords the means of perpetuating and extending it. See how it is exercised? Let me first mention the unutterably heinous law -—I can characterize it by no milder epithet—of Feb. 12th, 1793, putting the liberty of every freeman in this nation at the mercy of every paltry town or county magistrate whom the kidnapper may delude or bribe to do his dirty work. If my neighbor sues me for twenty dollars, the Constitution of my country gives me the security of a jury of our peers to pass between us. Not so with my liberty, which I value at more than twenty dollars. Let a stranger come among us of the free States, and claim one of our number as his runaway slave, and let him satisfy, any how, some trading justice that his claim is good, •and that justice’s warrant is valid for him against all the world. The law makes no distinction between white and black men, though, if it did, it would make no difference in the atrocity of the principle. Let the man-stealer get that warrant, and with it he may bring me or any representative from a free State on this, floor to the auction block close by this Capitol, to make our next remove in chains to Natchez or New Orleans. He may take my wife from my side, or my infant from its cradle, and, if I resist, he is armed with the whole power of the country to strike me downt The odious law, by its letter, threatens and insults the Governor of Massachusetts or New York as much as the darkest me
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