be crossed, thwarted, counteracted; to be forced in upon himself; to be the sport of endless contradictions; to be driven back and forth forever between mutually repellant forces; and all, all “at the discretion of another!"[14] How can man be treated according to his nature, as endowed with reason or will, if excluded from the powers and privileges of self-government?—­if “despotism” be let loose upon him, to “deprive him of personal liberty, oblige him to serve at the discretion of another” and with the power of “transferring” such “authority” over him and such claim upon him, to “another master?” If “thousands of enlightened and good men” can so easily be found, who are forward to support “despotism” as “of all governments the best and most acceptable to God,” we need not wonder at the testimony of universal history, that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”  Groans and travail pangs must continue to be the order of the day throughout “the whole creation,” till the rod of despotism be broken, and man be treated as man—­as capable of, and entitled to, self-government.

[Footnote 14:  Pittsburg pamphlet, p. 12.]

But what is the despotism whose horrid features our smooth professor tries to hide beneath an array of cunningly selected words and nicely-adjusted sentences?  It is the despotism of American slavery—­which crushes the very life of humanity out of its victims, and transforms them to cattle!  At its touch, they sink from men to things!  “Slaves,” saith Professor Stuart, “were property in Greece and Rome.  That decides all questions about their relation.”  Yes, truly.  And slaves in republican America are property; and as that easily, clearly, and definitely settles “all questions about their relation,” why should the Princeton professor have put himself to the trouble of weaving a definition equally ingenious and inadequate—­at once subtle and deceitful.  Ah, why?  Was he willing thus to conceal the wrongs of his mother’s children even from himself?  If among the figments of his brain, he could fashion slaves, and make them something else than property, he knew full well that a very different pattern was in use among the southern patriarchs.  Why did he not, in plain words and sober earnest, and good faith, describe the thing as it was, instead of employing honied words and courtly phrases, to set forth with all becoming vagueness and ambiguity, what might possibly be supposed to exist in the regions of fancy.

   “FOR RULERS ARE NOT A TERROR TO GOOD WORKS, BUT TO THE EVIL.”