But there is a class of things among them which men of well-regulated minds and habits cannot but detest.  These, as they have come under my notice, I have pointed out.  The chief of all is slavery.  This stared me in the face the moment I entered the States; and it presses itself on my notice now that I have retired from the American shore.  It is the beginning and the ending of all that is vile and vicious in this confederation of Republics.  In England, you have been often told by American visiters that the Northern States of the Union are not at all identified with slavery, and are, in fact, no more responsible for its existence in the South than we are for the existence of a like system in the colonies of some of our European Allies.  Than this representation nothing can be further from the truth.  There is really no analogy whatever between the two cases.  Each State, it is true, has its own distinct and independent legislature; but all the States are united in one federation, which has a thoroughly pro-slavery government.  The constitution is pledged to maintain the execrable system, and the Northern States are pledged to maintain the hypocritical constitution.

That no preponderance of influence might be given to any one State over the rest, by making it the seat of the central government, a district of 10 miles square was partitioned out, partly from Virginia and partly from Maryland, for that purpose.  This district, called the District of Columbia, has no government and no representation of its own, but is under the absolute control and regulation of the United Government or Congress, “exclusive jurisdiction over it in all cases whatsoever” having been given by the constitution.  In this absolute government of the “ten miles square,” embracing the site of Washington the capital, the Northern States, by their representatives in Congress, have their full share.  Now, not merely does slavery exist in that District, but it exists there under statutes so barbarous and cruel that the neighbouring slave States have actually abolished the like within the bounds of their separate jurisdiction, leaving to the free States the unenviable responsibility of enforcing laws too horrible for kidnappers.  Take a specimen,—­“A slave convicted of any petit treason, or murder, or wilful burning of a dwelling-house, to have the right hand cut off, to be hanged in the usual manner, the head severed from the body, the body divided into four quarters, and the head and quarters set up in the most public places of the county where such act was committed.”  Take another,—­“A free negro may be arrested, and put in jail for 3 months, on suspicion of being a runaway; and if he is not able to prove his freedom in 12 months, he is to be sold as a slave TO PAY HIS JAIL FEES!” Are there not hundreds of free men, both black and white, who could not prove their freedom under such circumstances?  Yet, for this crime, they are reduced to perpetual bondage by authority of Congress.  And all this the North upholds!