road, or a canal, if she can control it, across the Isthmus of Suez, to place Asia in competition with America. This is the only way in which she can maintain herself for any great length of time against our commercial rivalry. We can meet her policy only by a ship canal across the Isthmus of Central America, and a railroad through our own territory to the Pacific Ocean enabling us to compete advantageously with her in eastern Asia. Great Britain having turned her attention eastward, and being likely for some time to come to have her hands full with France and Russia, whom in the late war she adroitly played off one against the other, our filibusters seem to fancy that there is a chance of founding, by aid of the slave interest, a southern republic unconnected with the free states of this Union, and of securing the commercial advantages to which Central America is the key. Hence the opposition of the South to the Pacific railroad, unless it is made so far South as to come within what is intended to be the southern republic. But this southern republic is a dream that will never be realized. The whole power of the federal government in the hands of the free states, will be exerted, if necessary, to prevent it. Those southern states, not yet within the limits of the Union will, if they change their present condition, be annexed to our confederacy. No matter what the journals may say. No administration will favor or suffer such a republic independent of the Union.

To the annexation of these states there are several weighty objections. One is that we have no right to them, and cannot do it without tarnishing our national honor. Another reason is, the South will oppose their annexation unless they are annexed as slave states, and to their annexation as slave states the North will never consent, and the North is wrought up to that degree of heat, and is so confident of its strength, that it will have its way. It counts its late defeat a victory, and it will yield hereafter to slavery nothing not contained in the bond. In all the Spanish American republics slavery has been abolished, and we shall never consent to take the retrograde step of reëstablishing it. The progress of the whole civilized world since the introduction of Christianity has been towards the abolition of slavery. To reestablish it where it has been abolished is to take a step backwards towards barbarism and paganism. It would be a fine compliment to American democracy to say that wherever it extends it carries slavery with it. It will

do very well for our southern "fire eaters" to tell us slavery is the basis of freedom, and the cement of the Union, but no man of ordinary intelligence and right feeling can be expected to believe it. The states in question may ultimately be annexed to the Union, but not till they can be annexed as free states. Some of the slave states may threaten secession, and may even take measures to secede; but they will soon be glad enough to return, for if they secede they will leave the Union behind them, and by no means carry it with them. We have confidence that this grand filibuster and annexation scheme will find no favor with the incoming administration.

The true policy for us towards our Spanish American neighbors is to respect their rights as independent states, to suppress all invasions of them by our citizens, to protect them, aid them to recover from their internal distractions, and stimulate them by our trade and good offices to maintain well ordered governments, and to develop their internal resources. In this way we shall best promote both their interest and our own. At any rate, the incoming administration must put down filibustering. Filibusters are simply freebooters, pirates, thieves, robbers, murderers, and it is any thing but creditable to us, that they are able to awaken the sympathies of a people like the American. They are corrupt and corrupting, and already have they had a most deleterious effect on both the public and private conscience of large masses of our citizens. No doubt they have gained sympathy chiefly because they have given themselves out as the soldiers,-irregular soldiers it may be, but the soldiers of liberty. Walker's conduct in Nicaragua in revoking the decree abolishing slavery, and practising the most cruel despotism, strips them of that mask, and they will henceforth, we hope, be held in the horror and detestation they deserve.

Some things more we had intended to say, but we have said enough. We have written for the purpose of throwing out a few suggestions which we hope the incoming administration will regard as those of a friend and not an enemy, but as those of one who loves truth and justice even more than the material interests of his country, and his country. more than party, and who asks nothing of any administration for himself. Wiser suggestions may be made; none more honest or disinterested will be offered. We follow no party lead; we go with party as far as it goes with us,

and no further. We reluctantly voted against Col. Fremont, for we feared the influence of the abolition leaders who surrounded him, but we are as loath to support a southern as a northern sectional party, and though we voted for Mr. Buchanan, we will support him only so far as he proves himself a Union president.

THE SLAVERY QUESTION ONCE MORE.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for April, 1857.]

We have been told that our remarks on Slavery and the Incoming Administration gave great offence to some of our readers, and we have found ourselves denounced in a Virginia journal of note and influence as on the verge of blackrepublicanism. We are not surprised at this, for partisans can rarely understand the position of one who holds himself independent of party, and who assumes the right to judge all parties.

Our views on slavery itself were given in April, 1838,* and were such as to secure us the friendship of the late John C. Calhoun, and of several of the more eminent statesmen of the slave-holding states. We are not aware of having changed our views on that subject since. We have never professed to admire slavery, or to wish its continuance; we have uniformly expressed ourselves as in opposition to it, wherever it is an open question, whether it shall exist or not. Thus we say to the South, January, 1841, "Slavery we cannot advocate, for we can see no affinity between slavery and democracy. We shall undoubtedly speak out unquestioned, and unobstructed, in favor of universal freedom to universal man." "You must not think that we advocate slavery on principle, that we love the institution. There is not a Democrat north of Mason and Dixon's line that does not loathe it, and believe it a crime against humanity. We refrain from meddling with it, simply because it is a matter which concerns states of which we are not citizens, because we can reach it by no constitutional action, and because we believe liberty is more interested at present in preserving the constitution, in maintaining state rights,

Slavery-Abolitionism, Brownson's Works, Vol. XV., pp. 45 et seq.

than in attempting the doubtful good of emancipating the slave without making any provision for him after his fetters have been knocked off."* Substantially the same views we have always expressed whenever we have alluded to the subject. We have maintained and still maintain that a man may hold slaves with a good conscience, in opposition to abolitionists who maintain that slavery is always and everywhere and under all circumstances a sin, but we have never approved it.

We have, ever since 1838, uniformly opposed,-no man more strenuously, whether efficiently or not, -the whole abolition movement, on legal, moral, economical, and political grounds. Touching the question of slavery the several states are, in relation to one another, independent sovereignties, and must be regarded as so many independent foreign nations. New York has the same right to take cognizance of slavery in South Carolina that she has to take cognizance of any domestic institution of France or Great Britain, and no more; that is to say, no right at all. As a citizen of New York I am not responsible for the existence of slavery in any other state in the Union, and I cannot, further than the expression of my individual opinion, interfere with the relation existing between the master and his slave, without violating international law, striking at the mutual equality and independence of the states, and sapping the constitution of the Union. The whole abolition movement of the nonslaveholding states as it has been carried on for now nearly thirty years we regard and for nearly the whole of that time have regarded as immoral, illegal, and its abettors as punishable by our laws.

We deny, and always have denied, the right of congress to legislate on the subject. The fugitive-slave law is simply a law for executing a clause in the constitution, which is in the nature of an extradition clause, in a treaty between independent sovereigns. We always regarded the so-called "Missouri compromise" as unconstitutional. Slavery with us is purely a STATE institution, deriving from state sovereignty alone, and there is under our system no power to authorize or to abolish it, but the state itself, that is, the people in their state as distinguished from their federal capacity. The state may or may not, as it chooses, authorize slavery, forbid it, or abolish it, without leave asked or ob

*Ibid, pp. 131-2.

tained from the Union, or from her sister states. Congres has, then, no power to say to the states on one side of a given parallel of latitude you may, and on the other, you shall not, hold slaves. The constitution gives it no such power either in respect of old states or new states. New York has been a slaveholding state since my recollection, and may become so again if she chooses. Congress has nothing to say on the subject. one way or the other. In the admission of new states, it has no right to say the state must come in with or without slaves. The state does not become a state by the act of admission, for it is admitted, and can be admitted, into the Union only as a state, and therefore must exist as a state before admission. When leave is given to a territory to form a state constitution for itself, and it has in accordance with the leave obtained formed its constitution, and organized its state government, it is a state, a free sovereign state, and till its admission, as independent of the Union, as though it were a foreign nation. If congress refuses to admit it, it does not fall back under the territorial government, and become subject again to the Union, but remains a state outside of the Union, free and independent, with all the rights and capacities of a sovereign community. Congress then cannot dictate to the people of the territory the provisions of the constitution they adopt, and must treat them in relation to their constitution, precisely as it must treat the states already in the Union. It has then nothing to say in the formation of their constitution on the subject of slavery. When they have organized their state government, they have the right to apply for admission into the Union, and it is obligatory on congress to admit them, if they have adopted a state government republican in its form. This settles the question as to the Missouri compromise, and proves it to be unconstitutional.

The only case in which it can be pretended that congress may interfere with the slave question is in the organization of territorial governments; but it cannot even in this case interfere with it, because under our system slavery is purely a state question, and has no existence where there is no state. The federal government is a government of express powers, and among its express powers there is none which gives it authority to introduce or abolish, to authorize or prohibit slavery. Its powers in regard to territories not yet erected into states are restricted to the necessities of the case, and must be exercised in accordance with the general principles