and mangled ruin Judge Douglas makes of our once glorious Declaration.  He says “they were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain!” Why, according to this, not only negroes but white people outside of Great Britain and America were not spoken of in that instrument.  The English, Irish, and Scotch, along with white Americans, were included, to be sure; but the French, Germans, and other white people of the world are all gone to pot along with the Judge’s inferior races!

I had thought that the Declaration promised something better than the condition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we should be equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal condition.  According to that, it gave no promise that, having kicked off the king and lords of Great Britain, we should not at once be saddled with a king and lords of our own.

I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men, everywhere; but no, it merely “was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the mother-country.”  Why, that object having been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no practical use now—­mere rubbish—­old wadding, left to rot on the battle-field after the victory is won.

I understand you are preparing to celebrate the “Fourth,” to-morrow week.  What for?  The doings of that day had no reference to the present; and quite half of you are not even descendants of those who were referred to at that day.  But I suppose you will celebrate, and will even go so far as to read the Declaration.  Suppose, after you read it once in the old-fashioned way, you read it once more with Judge Douglas’s version.  It will then run thus:  “We told these truths to be self-evident, that all British subjects who were on this continent eighty-one years ago, were created equal to all British subjects born and then residing in Great Britain!”

...  The very Dred Scott case affords a strong test as to which party most favours amalgamation, the Republicans or the dear Union-saving Democracy.  Dred Scott, his wife and two daughters, were all involved in the suit.  We desired the court to have held that they were citizens, so far at least as to entitle them to a hearing as to whether they were free or not; and then also, that they were in fact and in law really free.  Could we have had our way, the chances of these black girls ever mixing their blood with that of white people would have been diminished at least to the extent that it could not have been without their consent.  But Judge Douglas is delighted to have them decided to be slaves, and not human enough to have a hearing, even if they were free, and thus left subject to the forced concubinage of their masters, and liable to become the mothers of mulattoes in spite of themselves,—­the very state of the case that produces nine-tenths of all the mulattoes, all the mixing of the blood of the nation.