of constitutional favor to the slaveholders would, of itself, naturally create for them an undue and disproportionate influence in the control of the government; but when to this is added the arrogance that the possession of irresponsible power almost invariably engenders in its possessors—­their overreaching assumptions—­the contempt that the slaveholders entertain for the great body of the people of the North, it has almost delivered over the government, bound neck and heels, into the hands of slaveholding politicians—­to be bound still more rigorously, or unloosed, as may seem well in their discretion.

Who can doubt that, as a nation, we should have been more honorable and influential abroad—­more prosperous and united at home—­if Kentucky, at the very outset of this matter, had been refused admission to the Union until she had expunged from her Constitution the covenant with oppression?  She would not have remained out of the Union a single year on that account.  If the worship of Liberty had not been exchanged for that of Power—­if her principles had been successfully maintained in this first assault, their triumph in every other would have been easy.  We should not have had a state less in the confederacy, and slavery would have been seen, at this time, shrunk up to the most contemptible dimensions, if it had not vanished entirely away.  But we have furnished another instance to be added to the long and melancholy list already existing, to prove that,—­

                       “facilis descensus Averni,
       Sed revocare gradum
       Hoc opus hic labor est,”

if poetry is not fiction.

Success in the Missouri struggle—­late as it was—­would have placed the cause of freedom in our country out of the reach of danger from its inexorable foe.  The principles of liberty would have struck deeper root in the free states, and have derived fresh vigor from such a triumph.  If these principles had been honored by the government from that period to the present, (as they would have been, had the free states, even then, assumed their just preponderance in its administration,) we should now have, in Missouri herself, a healthful and vigorous ally in the cause of freedom; and, in Arkansas, a free people—­twice her present numbers—­pressing on the confines of slavery, and summoning the keepers of the southern charnel-house to open its doors, that its inmates might walk forth, in a glorious resurrection to liberty and life.  Although young, as a people, we should be, among the nations, venerable for our virtue; and we should exercise an influence on the civilized and commercial world that we most despair of possessing, as long as we remain vulnerable to every shaft that malice, or satire, or philanthropy may find it convenient to hurl against us.[A]

[Footnote A:  A comic piece—­the production of one of the most popular of the French writers in his way—­had possession of the Paris stage last winter.  When one of the personages SEPARATES HUSBAND AND WIFE, he cries out, “BRAVO!  THIS IS THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES!” [Bravo!  C’est la Declaration d’Independence des Etats Unis.]