Now, which voice shall prevail?  Neither party has any more right than the other; and neither party has any right at all.  The Territories are in a state of wardship; and Congress is to decide as it thinks best for their welfare, present and future; and if Congress thinks that a nation prospers with free institutions and droops under slavery, then let Congress admit the Territory as a Free State.  True, there is some inconvenience to the slave-holder; but from so abnormal a relation as slavery some inconvenience must result.  When admitted to be a necessary evil, it is barely tolerable; when boastingly proclaimed to be a sovereign good, it is fairly intolerable.  And it is both criminal and foolish to try to make good all the evils inseparable from slavery by systematic injustice to other interests.

“Slavery has changed.  When Southern men consented to its prohibition, they hoped and believed that the time would come when it could be abolished altogether.  They have as much right to these as to their former opinions, and to have them represented in the Government.”

Here Mr. Fisher hints at, rather than fully states, the grand retort of the Southerners,—­“Our fathers, you say, were opposed to slavery:  very good; but we are not:  why should we be bound by their opinions?” A mere misapprehension of the force of the argument.  The Southerner of 1860 is not bound by the opinions of Madison and Jefferson; but the North may fairly adduce the opinions of those men, who were framers of the Constitution, not as binding upon their descendants, but as serving to explain the meaning of disputed provisions in that Constitution.  The Constitution binds us all, North and South:  then recurs the question, What is the meaning of its provisions? and then the contemporaneous opinions of its framers come legitimately into play as an argument.

Of the Missouri Compromise Mr. Fisher says,—­

“It may be said that this law was a violation of the equal rights of the Southern people, by excluding them from a large portion of the national domain.  The answer is, not merely that this was done with their consent, their representatives having approved the law, but that the law did recognize their rights, by dividing between them and the Northern people all the territory then possessed by the Government.”

We are surprised that upon his own presentation of the case this simple question does not occur to Mr. Fisher:  Supposing the South and the North to have had equal and conflicting rights in the national domain, and supposing that there was need of some arbiter, and remembering that Congress undertook the duties of arbiter and decided that the division under the Missouri Compromise gave each section its rightful share,—­then, with what propriety can the South, after occupying its own share, call for a portion in the share allotted to the North?

The second essay, on “Popular Sovereignty in the Territories,” presents comparatively few salient points.  A very spirited and just history of the working of the Administration schemes in Kansas, a restating of some of the arguments against the Kansas-Nebraska Act set forth in the preceding essay, and a remonstrance against the headstrong course of Southern politicians are its most noticeable features.