We say, then, that we are glad to see this division in the Tract Society, —­not glad because of the division, but because it has sprung from an earnest effort to relieve the Society of a reproach which was not only impairing its usefulness, but doing an injury to the cause of truth and sincerity everywhere.  We have no desire to impugn the motives of those who consider themselves conservative members of the Society; we believe them to be honest in their convictions, or their want of them; but we think they have mistaken notions as to what conservatism is, and that they are wrong in supposing it to consist in refusing to wipe away the film on their spectacle-glasses which prevents their seeing the handwriting on the wall, or in conserving reverently the barnacles on their ship’s bottom and the dry-rot in its knees.  We yield to none of them in reverence for the Past; it is there only that the imagination can find repose and seclusion; there dwells that silent majority whose experience guides our action and whose wisdom shapes our thought in spite of ourselves;—­but it is not length of days that can make evil reverend, nor persistence in inconsistency that can give it the power or the claim of orderly precedent.  Wrong, though its title-deeds go back to the days of Sodom, is by nature a thing of yesterday,—­while the right, of which we became conscious but an hour ago, is more ancient than the stars, and of the essence of Heaven.  If it were proposed to establish Slavery to-morrow, should we have more patience with its patriarchal argument than with the parallel claim of Mormonism?  That Slavery is old is but its greater condemnation; that we have tolerated it so long, the strongest plea for our doing so no longer.  There is one institution to which we owe our first allegiance, one that is more sacred and venerable than any other,—­the soul and conscience of Man.

What claim has Slavery to immunity from discussion?  We are told that discussion is dangerous.  Dangerous to what?  Truth invites it, courts the point of the Ithuriel-spear, whose touch can but reveal more clearly the grace and grandeur of her angelic proportions.  The advocates of Slavery have taken refuge in the last covert of desperate sophism, and affirm that their institution is of Divine ordination, that its bases are laid in the nature of man.  Is anything, then, of God’s contriving endangered by inquiry?  Was it the system of the universe, or the monks, that trembled at the telescope of Galileo?  Did the circulation of the firmament stop in terror because Newton laid his daring finger on its pulse?  But it is idle to discuss a proposition so monstrous.  There is no right of sanctuary for a crime against humanity, and they who drag an unclean thing to the horns of the altar bring it to vengeance and not to safety.