drink, and wear.  But, I trust, that we at the North are “made of sterner stuff.”  They, who make slaves of others, can more easily become slaves themselves:  for, in their aggressions upon others, they have despised and trampled under foot those great, eternal principles of right, which not only constitute the bulwark of the general freedom; but his respect for which is indispensable to every man’s valuation and protection of his individual liberties.  This train of thought associates with itself in my mind, the following passage in an admirable speech delivered by the celebrated William Pinckney, in the Maryland House of Delegates in 1789.  Such a speech, made at the present time in a slave State, would probably cost the life of him who should make it; nor could it be delivered in a free States at any less sacrifice, certainly, than that of the reputation of the orator.  What a retrograde movement has liberty made in this country in the last fifty years!

“Whilst a majority of your citizens are accustomed to rule with the authority of despots, within particular limits—­while your youths are reared in the habit of thinking that the great rights of human nature are not so sacred, but they may with innocence be trampled on, can it be expected, that the public mind should glow with that generous ardor in the cause of freedom, which can alone save a government, like ours, from the lurking demon of usurpation?  Do you not dread the contamination of principle?  Have you no alarms for the continuance of that spirit, which once conducted us to victory and independence, when the talons of power were unclasped for our destruction?  Have you no apprehension left, that when the votaries of freedom sacrifice also at the gloomy altars of slavery, they will, at length, become apostates from them for ever?  For my own part, I have no hope, that the stream of general liberty will flow for ever, unpolluted, through the foul mire of partial bondage, or that they, who have been habituated to lord it over others, will not be base enough, in time, to let others lord it over them.  If they resist, it will be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of principle.”

Had Edmund Burke known slaveholders as well as Mr. Pinckney knew them, he would not have pronounced his celebrated eulogium on their love of liberty;—­he would not have ascribed to them any love of liberty, but the spurious kind which the other orator, impliedly, ascribes to them—­that which “pride and selfishness” beget and foster.  Genuine love of liberty, as Mr. Pinckney clearly saw, springs from “principle,” and is found no where but in the hearts of those who respect the liberties and the rights of others.