then have to attend to.  It will then be compelled to attend to other questions, besides this question which now assumes an overwhelming importance—­the question of slavery.  It is true that in the organization of the Republican party this question of slavery was more important than any other:  indeed, so much more important has it become that no more national question can even get a hearing just at present.  The old question of tariff—­a matter that will remain one of the chief affairs of national house-keeping to all time; the question of the management of financial affairs; the question of the disposition of the public domain how shall it be managed for the purpose of getting it well settled, and of making there the homes of a free and happy people? these will remain open and require attention for a great while yet, and these questions will have to be attended to by whatever party has the control of the Government.  Yet, just now, they cannot even obtain a hearing, and I do not propose to detain you upon these topics or what sort of hearing they should have when opportunity shall come.

For, whether we will or not, the question of slavery is the question, the all-absorbing topic of the day.  It is true that all of us—­and by that I mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people, here and elsewhere—­all of us wish this question settled, wish it out of the way.  It stands in the way, and prevents the adjustment, and the giving of necessary attention to other questions of national house-keeping.  The people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled, and yet it is not settled.  And the reason is that they are not yet agreed how it shall be settled.  All wish it done, but some wish one way and some another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies are pulling in different directions, and none of them, having a decided majority, are able to accomplish the common object.

In the beginning of the year 1854, a new policy was inaugurated with the avowed object and confident promise that it would entirely and forever put an end to the slavery agitation.  It was again and again declared that under this policy, when once successfully established, the country would be forever rid of this whole question.  Yet under the operation of that policy this agitation has not only not ceased, but it has been constantly augmented.  And this too, although, from the day of its introduction, its friends, who promised that it would wholly end all agitation, constantly insisted, down to the time that the Lecompton Bill was introduced, that it was working admirably, and that its inevitable tendency was to remove the question forever from the politics of the country.  Can you call to mind any Democratic speech, made after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, down to the time of the Lecompton Bill, in which it was not predicted that the slavery agitation was just at an end, that “the abolition excitement was played out,” “the Kansas question was dead,” “they have made the most they can out of this question and it is now forever settled”?  But since the Lecompton Bill no Democrat, within my experience, has ever pretended that he could see the end.  That cry has been dropped.  They themselves do not pretend, now, that the agitation of this subject has come to an end yet.