It was the unconquerable spirit of liberty, nurtured by republican habits and institutions, that illustrated the pass of Thermopylae.  Yet slavery was not only tolerated in Sparta, but was established by one of the fundamental laws of Lycurgus, having for its object the encouragement of that very spirit.  Attica was full of slaves—­yet the love of liberty was its characteristic.  What else was it that foiled the whole power of Persia at Marathon and Salamis?  What other soil than that which the genial sun of republican freedom illuminated and warmed, could have produced such men as Leonidas and Miltiades, Themistocles and Epaminondas?  Of Rome it would be superfluous to speak at large.  It is sufficient to name the mighty mistress of the world, before Sylla gave the first stab to her liberties and the great dictator accomplished their final ruin, to be reminded of the practicability of union between civil slavery and an ardent love of liberty cherished by republican establishments.

If we return home for instruction upon this point, we perceive that same union exemplified in many a State, in which “Liberty has a temple in every house, an altar in every heart,” while involuntary servitude is seen in every direction.

Is it denied that those States possess a republican form of government?  If it is, why does our power of correction sleep?  Why is the constitutional guaranty suffered to be inactive?  Why am I permitted to fatigue you, as the representative of a slaveholding State, with the discussion of the “nugae canorae” (for so I think them) that have been forced into this debate contrary to all the remonstrances of taste and prudence?  Do gentlemen perceive the consequences to which their arguments must lead if they are of any value?  Do they reflect that they lead to emancipation in the old United States—­or to an exclusion of Delaware, Maryland, and all the South, and a great portion of the West from the Union?  My honorable friend from Virginia has no business here, if this disorganizing creed be anything but the production of a heated brain.  The State to which I belong, must “perform a lustration”—­must purge and purify herself from the feculence of civil slavery, and emulate the States of the North in their zeal for throwing down the gloomy idol which we are said to worship, before her senators can have any title to appear in this high assembly.  It will be in vain to urge that the old United States are exceptions to the rule—­or rather (as the gentlemen express it), that they have no disposition to apply the rule to them.  There can be no exceptions by implication only, to such a rule; and expressions which justify the exemption of the old States by inference, will justify the like exemption of Missouri, unless they point exclusively to them, as I have shown they do not.  The guarded manner, too, in which some of the gentlemen have occasionally expressed themselves on this subject, is somewhat alarming.  They have