public sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn of the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular-sovereignty. You need but one or two turns further, until your minds, now ripening under these teachings, will be ready for all these things, and you will receive and support or submit to the slave-trade, revived with all its horrors, a slave-code enforced in our Territories, and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up into the very heart of the free North.

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". . . I ask attention to the fact that in a preeminent degree these popular sovereigns are at this work: blowing out the moral lights around us; teaching that the negro is no longer a man, but a brute; that the Declaration has nothing to do with him; that he ranks with the crocodile and the reptile; that man with body and soul is a matter of dollars and cents. I suggest to this portion of the Ohio Republicans, or Democrats, if there be any present, the serious consideration of this fact, that there is now going on among you a steady process of debauching public opinion on this subject. With this, my friends, I bid you adieu."

FROM HIS SPEECH AT CINCINNATI, OHIO.

September 17, 1859.

I am what they call, as I understand it, a Black Republican.' I think slavery is wrong, morally and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union. While I say this for myself, I say to you, Kentuckians, that I understand you differ radically with me upon this proposition; that you believe slavery is a good thing; that slavery is right; that it ought to be extended and perpetuated in this Union. Now, there being this broad difference between us, I do not pretend, in addressing myself to you, Kentuckians, to attempt proselyting you. That would be a vain effort. I do not enter upon it. I only propose to try to show you that you ought to nominate for the next presidency, at Charleston, my distinguished friend, Judge Douglas. In all that, there is no real difference between you and him; I understand he is as sincerely for you, and more wisely for you than you are for yourselves. I will try to demonstrate that proposition.

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. . . What do you want more than anything else to make successful your views of slavery, to

advance the outspread of it, and to secure and perpetuate the nationality of it? What do you want more than anything else? What is needed absolutely? What is indispensable to you? Why, if I may be allowed to answer the question, it is to retain a hold upon the North; to retain support and strength from the free States. If you can get this support and strength from the free States, you can succeed. If you do not get this support and this strength from the free States, you are in a minority, and you are beaten at once.

"If that proposition be admitted, and it is undeniable, then the next thing I say to you is, that Douglas, of all men in this nation, is the only man that affords you any hold upon the free States; that no other man can give you any strength in the free States. This being so, if you doubt the other branch of the proposition, whether he is really for you, as I have expressed it, I propose asking your attention for a while to a few facts. ". . . In the first place, we know that, in a government like this, a government of the people, where the voice of all the men of the country, substantially, enters into the administration of the government, what lies at the bottom of all of it, is public opinion. I lay down the proposition that Judge Douglas is not only the man

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that promises you in advance a hold upon the North, and support in the North, but that he constantly moulds public opinion to your ends; that in every possible way he can, he moulds the public opinion of the North to your ends; and if there are a few things in which he seems to be against you, a few things which he says that

appear to be against you; and a few things that he forbears to say, which you would like to have him say, you ought to remember that the saying of the one, or the forbearing to say the other, would lose his hold upon the North, and by consequence would lose his capacity to serve you.

"Upon this subject of moulding public opinion, I call your attention to the fact for a wellestablished fact it is — that the Judge never says your institution of slavery is wrong; he never says it is right, to be sure, but he never says it is wrong. There is not a public man in the United States, I believe, with the exception of Senator Douglas, who has not, at some time in his life, declared his opinion whether the thing is right or wrong; but Senator Douglas never declares it is wrong. He leaves himself at perfect liberty to do all in your favour which he would be hindered from doing if he were to declare the thing to be wrong. On the contrary, he takes all the chances

that he has for inveigling the sentiment of the North, opposed to slavery, into your support, by never saying it is right. This you ought to set down to his credit. You ought to give him full credit for this much, little though it be in comparison with the whole which he does for you.

"Some other things I will ask your attention to. He said upon the floor of the Senate of the United States, and he has repeated it, as I understand, a great many times, that he does not care 'whether slavery is voted up or voted down.' This again shows you, or ought to show you, if you would reason upon it, that he does not believe it to be wrong; for a man may say, when he sees nothing wrong in a thing, that he does not care whether it be voted up or voted down; but no man can logically say that he cares not whether a thing goes up or down which appears to him to be wrong. You therefore have a demonstration in this, that to Judge Douglas's mind, your favourite institution, which you desire to have spread out and made perpetual, is no wrong

"Another thing he tells you in a speech made in Memphis . . . last year. He there distinctly told the people that there was a line drawn by the Almighty across this continent,' on one side of which the soil must always be cultivated by