And Mr. Sumner “knows no better aim, under the Constitution, than to bring back the government to where it was in 1789!” Has the voyage been so very honest and prosperous a one, in his opinion, that his only wish is to start again with the same ship, the same crew, and the same sailing orders?  Grant all he claims as to the state of public opinion, the intentions of leading men, and the form of our institutions at that period; still, with all these checks on wicked men, and helps to good ones, here we are, in 1853, according to his own showing, ruled by slavery, tainted to the core with slavery, and binding the infamous Fugitive Slave Law like an honorable frontlet on our brows.  The more accurate and truthful his glowing picture of the public virtue of 1789, the stronger my argument.  If even all those great patriots, and all that enthusiasm for justice and liberty, did not avail to keep us safe in such a Union, what will?  In such desperate circumstances, can his statesmanship devise no better aim than to try the same experiment over again, under precisely the same conditions?  What new guaranties does he propose to prevent the voyage from being again turned into a piratical slave-trading cruise?  None!  Have sixty years taught us nothing?  In 1660, the English thought, in recalling Charles II., that the memory of that scaffold which had once darkened the windows of Whitehall would be guaranty enough for his good behavior.  But, spite of the spectre, Charles II. repeated Charles I., and James outdid him.  Wiser by this experience, when the nation in 1689 got another chance, they trusted to no guaranties, but so arranged the very elements of their government that William III. could not repeat Charles I. Let us profit by the lesson. * * *

If all I have said to you is untrue, if I have exaggerated, explain to me this fact.  In 1831, Mr. Garrison commenced a paper advocating the doctrine of immediate emancipation.  He had against him the thirty thousand churches and all the clergy of the country,—­its wealth, its commerce, its press.  In 1831, what was the state of things?  There was the most entire ignorance and apathy on the slave question.  If men knew of the existence of slavery, it was only as a part of picturesque Virginia life.  No one preached, no one talked, no one wrote about it.  No whisper of it stirred the surface of the political sea.  The church heard of it occasionally, when some colonization agent asked funds to send the blacks to Africa.  Old school-books tainted with some antislavery selections had passed out of use, and new ones were compiled to suit the times.  Soon as any dissent from the prevailing faith appeared, every one set himself to crush it.  The pulpits preached at it; the press denounced it; mobs tore down houses, threw presses into the fire and the stream, and shot the editors; religious conventions tried to smother it; parties arrayed themselves against it.  Daniel Webster boasted in the Senate, that he had