Mr. Mann, in his speech of February 5, 1850, says:  “The States being separated, I would as soon return my own brother or sister into bondage, as I would return a fugitive slave.  Before God, and Christ, and all Christian men, they are my brothers and sisters.”  What a condition!  From the lips, too, of a champion of the Higher Law!  Whether the States be separate or united, neither my brother nor any other man’s brother shall, with my consent, go back to bondage!  So speaks the heart—­Mr. Mann’s version is that of the politician.

This seems to me a very mistaken strain.  Whenever slavery is banished from our national jurisdiction, it will be a momentous gain, a vast stride.  But let us not mistake the half-way house for the end of the journey.  I need not say that it matters not to Abolitionists under what special law slavery exists.  Their battle lasts while it exists anywhere, and I doubt not Mr. Sumner and Mr. Giddings feel themselves enlisted for the whole war.  I will even suppose, what neither of these gentlemen states, that their plan includes not only that slavery shall be abolished in the District and Territories but that the slave basis of representation shall be struck from the Constitution, and the slave-surrender clause construed away.  But even then does Mr. Giddings or Mr. Sumner really believe that slavery, existing in its full force in the States, “will cease to vex our national politics?” Can they point to any State where a powerful oligarchy, possessed of immense wealth, has ever existed without attempting to meddle in the government?  Even now, does not manufacturing, banking, and commercial capital perpetually vex our politics?  Why should not slave capital exert the same influence?  Do they imagine that a hundred thousand men, possessed of two thousand millions of dollars, which they feel the spirit of the age is seeking to tear from their grasp, will not eagerly catch at all the support they can obtain by getting the control of the government?  In a land where the dollar is almighty, “where the sin of not being rich is only atoned for by the effort to become so,” do they doubt that such an oligarchy will generally succeed?  Besides, banking and manufacturing stocks are not urged by despair to seek a controlling influence in politics.  They know they are about equally safe, whichever party rules—­that no party wishes to legislate their rights away.  Slave property knows that its being allowed to exist depends on its having the virtual control of the government.  Its constant presence in politics is dictated, therefore, by despair, as well as by the wish to secure fresh privileges.  Money, however, is not the only strength of the slave power.  That, indeed, were enough, in an age when capitalists are our feudal barons.  But, though driven entirely from national shelter, the slave-holders would have the strength of old associations, and of peculiar laws in their own States, which give those States wholly into their hands.  A weaker prestige, fewer privileges, and less comparative wealth, have enabled the British aristocracy to rule England for two centuries, though the root of their strength was cut at Naseby.  It takes ages for deeply-rooted institutions to die; and driving slavery into the States will hardly be our Naseby. * * *