of another, and the laws affording him no protection, and he has to beg pardon of man, because he has offended man, (not the laws,) as if his master were a superior and all powerful being.  Yes, this is slavery, boasted American slavery, without which, it is contended even here, that the union of these States would be dissolved in a day, yes, even in an hour!  Humiliating thought, that we are bound together as States by the chains of slavery!  It cannot be—­the blood and the tears of slavery form no part of the cement of our Union—­and it is hoped that by falling on its bands they may never corrode and eat them asunder.  We who are opposed to and deplore the existence of slavery in our country, are frequently asked, both in public and private, what have you to do with slavery?  It does not exist in your State; it does not disturb you!  Ah, sir, would to God it were so—­that we had nothing to do with slavery, nothing to fear from its power, or its action within our own borders, that its name and its miseries were unknown to us.  But this is not our lot; we live upon its borders, and in hearing of its cries; yet we are unwilling to acknowledge, that if we enter its territories and violate its laws, that we should be punished at its pleasure.  We do not complain of this, though it might well be considered just ground of complaint.  It is our firesides, our rights, our privileges, the safety of our friends, as well as the sovereignty and independence of our State, that we are now called upon to protect and defend.  The slave interest has at this moment the whole power of the country in its hands.  It claims the President as a Northern man with Southern feelings, thus making the Chief Magistrate the head of an interest, or a party, and not of the country and the people at large.  It has the cabinet of the President, three members of which are from the slave States, and one who wrote a book in favor of Southern slavery, but which fell dead from the press, a book which I have seen, in my own family, thrown musty upon the shelf.  Here then is a decided majority in favor of the slave interest.  It has five out of nine judges of the Supreme Court; here, also, is a majority from the slave States.  It has, with the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Clerks of both Houses, the army and the navy; and the bureaus, have, I am told, about the same proportion.  One would suppose that, with all this power operating in this Government, it would be content to permit—­yes I will use the word permit—­it would be content to permit us, who live in the free States, to enjoy our firesides and our homes in quietness; but this is not the case.  The slaveholders and slave laws claim that as property, which the free States know only as persons, a reasoning property, which, of its own will and mere motion, is frequently found in our States; and upon which THING we sometimes bestow food and raiment, if it appear hungry and perishing,