’The South’s safe enough, it don’t feel a mite skeery,
  Our slaves in their darkness an’ dut air tu blest
Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery
  Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional nest,’
    Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;—­
      ‘Oh,’ sez Westcott o’ Florida,
      ’Wut treason is horrider
    Then our priv’leges tryin’ to proon?’ sez he.

’It’s ’coz they’re so happy, thet, wen crazy sarpints
  Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so darned riled; 90
We think it’s our dooty to give pooty sharp hints,
  Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth sha’n’t be spiled,’
    Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;—­
      ‘Ah,’ sez Dixon H. Lewis,
      ’It perfectly true is
    Thet slavery’s airth’s grettest boon,’ sez he.

[It was said of old time, that riches have wings; and, though this be not applicable in a literal strictness to the wealth of our patriarchal brethren of the South, yet it is clear that their possessions have legs, and an unaccountable propensity for using them in a northerly direction.  I marvel that the grand jury of Washington did not find a true bill against the North Star for aiding and abetting Drayton and Sayres.  It would have been quite of a piece with the intelligence displayed by the South on other questions connected with slavery.  I think that no ship of state was ever freighted with a more veritable Jonah than this same domestic institution of ours.  Mephistopheles himself could not feign so bitterly, so satirically sad a sight as this of three millions of human beings crushed beyond help or hope by this one mighty argument,—­Our fathers knew no better! Nevertheless, it is the unavoidable destiny of Jonahs to be cast overboard sooner or later.  Or shall we try the experiment of hiding our Jonah in a safe place, that none may lay hands on him to make jetsam of him?  Let us, then, with equal forethought and wisdom, lash ourselves to the anchor, and await, in pious confidence, the certain result.  Perhaps our suspicious passenger is no Jonah after all, being black.  For it is well known that a superintending Providence made a kind of sandwich of Ham and his descendants, to be devoured by the Caucasian race.

In God’s name, let all, who hear nearer and nearer the hungry moan of the storm and the growl of the breakers, speak out!  But, alas! we have no right to interfere.  If a man pluck an apple of mine, he shall be in danger of the justice; but if he steal my brother, I must be silent.  Who says this?  Our Constitution, consecrated by the callous consuetude of sixty years, and grasped in triumphant argument by the left hand of him whose right hand clutches the clotted slave-whip.  Justice, venerable with the undethronable majesty of countless aeons, says,—­SPEAK!  The Past, wise with the sorrows and desolations of ages, from amid her shattered fanes and wolf-housing palaces, echoes,—­SPEAK!  Nature, through her thousand trumpets of freedom, her stars, her sunrises, her seas, her winds, her cataracts, her mountains blue with cloudy pines, blows jubilant encouragement, and cries,—­SPEAK!  From the soul’s trembling abysses the still, small voice not vaguely murmurs,—­SPEAK!  But, alas! the Constitution and the Honorable Mr. Bagowind, M.C., say—­BE DUMB!