at the Isthmus of Darien. Henceforth we must cease to cry peace, peace. Our eagle will whet, not gorge, its appetite on its first victim ; and snuff a more tempting quarry, more alluring blood, in every new region which opens southward. To annex Texas is to declare perpetual war with Mexico. That word Mexico, associated in men's minds with boundless wealth, has already awakened rapacity: 2919 "Can Mexico look without alarm on the approaches of this evers growing tide? Is she prepared to be a passive prey ? to shrink and surrender without a struggle? Is she not strong in her hatred, if not in her fortresses or skill? Strong enough to make war a dear and bloody game? Can she not bring to bear on us a force, more formidable than fleets, the force of privateers,--that is, of legalised pirates, which, issuing from her ports, will scour the seas, prey on our commerce, and add to spoliation cruelty and murder? "Even were the dispositions of our government most pacific and opposed to encroachment, the annexation of Texas would almost cert tainly embroil us with Mexico. This territory would be overrun by adventurers; and the most unprincipled of these, the proscribed, the disgraced, the outcasts of society, would, of course, keep always in advance of the better population. These would represent our republic on the borders of the Mexican States. The history of the connexion of such men with the Indians forewarns us of the outrages which would attend their contact with the border inhabitants of our southern neighbour. * "First, England has a moral interest in this question.The annexation of Texas is sought by us for the very purpose of extending slavery, and thus will necessarily give new life and extension to the slave-trade. A new and vast market for slaves cannot, of course, be opened, without inviting and obtaining a supply from abroad, as well as from this country. The most solemn treaties, and ships of war lining the African coast, do not, and cannot suppress this infernal traffic, as long as the slaver, freighted with stolen, chained, and wretched captives can obtain a price proportioned to the peril of the undertaking... "But England has a political as well as a moral interest in this question. By the annexation of Texas we shall approach her liberated colonies we shall build up a power in her neighbourhood, to which no limits can be prescribed. By adding Texas to our acquisition of Florida, we shall do much toward girdling the Gulf of Mexico; and I doubt not, that some of our politicians will feel as if our mastery in that sea were sure. The West Indian Archipelago, in which the European is regarded as an intruder, will, of course, be embraced in our ever-growing scheme of empire. In truth, collision with the West Indies will be the most certain effect of the extension of our power in that quarter. The example, which they exhibit, of African freedom, of the elevation of the coloured race to the rights of men, is of all influences most menacing to slavery at the South. It must grow continually more perilous. These islands, unless interfered with from abroad, seem destined to be nurseries of civilization and freedom to the African race. The white race must melt more and more before the coloured, if both are left to free competition. The Europeans, unnerved by the climate, and forming but a handful of the population, cannot stand before the African, who revels in the heat of the tropics, and is to develop under it all his energies. Will a slave-holding people, spreading along the shores of the Mexican Gulf, cultivate friendly sentiments towards communities, whose whole history will be a bitter reproach to their institutions-a witness against their wrongs; and whose ardent sympathies will be enlisted in the cause of the slave! Cruel, ferocious conflicts must grow from this neighbourhood of hostile principles, of communities regarding one another with unextinguishable hatred. All the islands of the Archipelago will have cause to dread our power; but none so much as the emancipated. Is it not more than possible, that wars, having for an object the subjugation of the coloured race, the destruction of this tempting example of freedom, should spring from the proposed extension of our dominion along the Mexican Gulf? Can England view our encroachments without alarm? I know it is thought that, staggering as she does under enormous debt, she will be slow to engage in war. But other nations of Europe have islands in the same neighbourhood, to induce them to make common cause with her. Other nations look with jealousy on our peculiar institutions and our growing maritime power. Other nations are unwilling that we should engross or control the whole commerce of the Mexican Gulf. We ought to remember that this jealousy is sanctioned by our own example. It is understood that, at one period of the internal disorders of Spain, which rendered all her foreign possessions insecure, we sought from France and Great Britain assurances that they would not possess themselves of Cuba. Still more, after the revolt of her colonies from Spain, and after our recognition of their independence, it was announced to the nations of Europe, in the message of the President, that we should regard as hostile any interference on their part with these new governments, "for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling their destiny in any other way.' I, of course, have no communication with foreign cabinets; but I cannot doubt that Great Britain has remonstrated against the annexation of Texas to this country. An English minister would be unwor Р thy of his office who should see another state greedily swallowing up territories in the neighbourhood of British colonies, and not strive, by all just means, to avert the danger. I have just referred to the warning given by us to the powers of Europe, to abstain from appropriating to themselves the colonies torn from Spain. How will Europe interpret our act, if we now seize Texas, and take this stride towards Mexico? Will she not suspect, that we purposed to drive away the older vultures, in order to keep the victim to ourselves; that, conscious of growing power, we foresaw, in the exclusion of foreign States, the sure extension of our own dominion over the new world? Can we expect those powers, with such an example before them, to heed our warning? Will they look patiently on, and see the young vulture feasting on the nearest prey, and fleshing itself for the spoils which their own near possessions will soon present? Will it be strange, if hunger for a share of the plunder, as well as the principle of self-defence, should make this continent the object of their policy to an extent we have never dreamed?.. Thus, wars with Europe and Mexico are to be entailed on us by the annexation of Texas. And is war the policy by which this country is to flourish? Was it for interminable conflicts that we formed our Union? Is it blood, shed for plunder, which is to consolidate our institutions? Is it by collision with the greatest maritime power, that our commerce is to gain strength? Is it by arming against ourselves the moral sentiments of the world, that we are to build up a national honour? Must we of the north buckle on our armour, to fight th the battles of slavery. * ༤༩༥ ་་་་ ་ "A nation provoking war by cupidity, by encroachment, and, above all, by efforts to propagate the curse of slavery, is alike false to itself, to God, and to the human race. "The annexation of Texas, I have said, will extend and perpetuate slavery. It is fitted, and still more intended to do so. On this point there can be no doubt. As far back as the year 1829, the annexation of Texas was agitated in the southern and western states; and it was urged on the ground of the strength and extension it would give to the slave-holding interest. In a series of essays, ascribed to a gentleman, now a senator in Congress, it was maintained that five or six slaveholding states would by this measure be added to the union; and he even intimated that as many as nine states as large as Kentucky might be formed within the limits of Texas. In Virginia, about the same time, calculations were made as to the increased value which would thus be given to slaves, and it was even said that this acquisition would raise the price fifty per cent. Of late the language on this subject is most explicit. The great argument for annexing Texas is, that it will strengthen the peculiar institutions' of the south, and open a new and vast field for slavery. "By this act slavery will be spread over regions, to which it is now impossible to set limits. Texas, I repeat it, is but the first step of aggressions. I trust, indeed, that Providence will beat back, and humble our cupidity and ambition. But one guilty success is often suffered to be crowned, as men call it, with greater; in order that a more awful retribution may at length vindicate the justice of God, and the rights. of the oppressed. Texas, smitten with slavery, will spread the infection beyond herself. We know that the tropical regions have been found most propitious to this pestilence; nor can we promise ourselves that its expulsion from them for a season forbids its return. By annexing Texas, we may send this scourge to a distance, which, if now revealed, would appal us, and through these vast regions every cry of the injured will invoke wrath on our heads. By this act, slavery will be perpetuated in the old states, as well as spread over new. It is well known, that the soil of some of the old states has become exhausted by slave-cultivation. Their neighbourhood to communities, which are flourishing under free labour, forces on them perpetual arguments for adopting this better system. They now adhere to slavery, not on account of the wealth which it extracts from the soil, but because it furnishes men and women to be sold in newlysettled and more southern districts. It is by slave-breeding and slaveselling that these states subsist. Take away from them a foreign market, and slavery would die. Of consequence, by opening a new market, it is prolonged and invigorated. By annexing Texas, we shall not only create it where it does not exist, but breathe new life into it where its end seemed to be near. States, which might, and ought to throw it off, will make the multiplication of slaves their great aim and chief resource. Nor is the worst told. As I have before intimated, and it cannot be too often repeated, we shall not only quicken the domestic slave trade-we shall give a new impulse to the foreign. This, indeed, we have pronounced in our laws to be felony; but we make our laws cobwebs, when we offer to rapacious men strong motives for their violation. Open a market for slaves in an unsettled country, with a sweep of seacoast, and at such a distance from the seat of government that laws may be evaded with impunity, and how can you exclude slaves from Africa? It is well known that cargoes have been landed in Louisiana. What is to drive them from Texas? In incorporating this region with the union, to make it a slave country, we send the kidnapper to prowl through the jungles, and to dart, like a beast of prey, on the defenceless villagers of Africa. We chain the helpless, despairing victims; crowd them into the fetid, pestilential slave-ships; expose them to the unutter* able cruelties of the middle passage; and, if they survive its crush them with perpetual bondage. "I now ask, whether, as a people, we are prepared to seize on a neigbouring territory, for the end of extending slavery? I ask, whether, as a people, we can stand forth in the sight of God, in the sight of the nations, and adopt this atrocious policy? Sooner perish! Sooner be our name blotted out from the record of nations! "This is no place for entering into the argument against slavery. I have elsewhere given my views of it. In truth, no argument is needed. The evil of slavery speaks for itself. It is one of those primary, intuitive truths, which need only a fair exhibition to be immediately received. To state, is to condemn this institution,The choice which every free man makes of death for his child and for everything he loves, in preference to slavery, shows what it is. The single consideration, that, by slavery, one human being is placed, powerless and defenceless, in the hands of another to be driven to whatever labour that other may impose-to suffer whatever punishment he may inflict -to live as his tool, the instrument of his pleasure this is all that is needed, to satisfy such as know the human heart and its unfitness for irresponsible power, that, of all conditions, slavery is the most hostile to the dignity, self-respect, improvement, rights, and happiness of human beings. Is it within the bounds of credibility, that a people, boasting of freedom, of civilization, of Christianity, should systematically strive to spread this calamity over the earth? "To perpetuate and extend slavery is not now, in a moral point of view, what it once was. We cannot shelter ourselves under the errors and usages of our times. We do not belong to the dark ages, or to heathenism. We have not grown up under the prejudices of a blinding, crushing tyranny. We live under free institutions, and under the broad light of Christianity. Every principle of our government and religion condemns slavery, The spirit of our age condemns it. The decree of the civilised world has gone out against it. England has abolished it. France and Denmark meditate its abolition. The chain is falling from the serf in Russia. In the whole circuit of civilised nations, with the single exception of the United States, not a voice is lifted up in defence of slavery. All the great names in legislation and religion are against it. The most enduring reputations of our times have been won by resisting it. Recall the great men of this and the last generation; and, be they philosophers, philanthropists, poets, economists, statesmen, jurists-all swell the reprobation of slavery. The |