pretty well, and spared our blushes for the model republic, if the slaveholders themselves would only withhold their testimony to the truth of what we were willing to let pass as fiction.  But they are worse than Mrs. Stowe herself, and their writings are getting to be quoted here quite extensively.  The Moniteur of to-day, and another widely-circulated journal that lies on my table, both contain extracts from those extremely incendiary periodicals, The National Intelligencer, of February 11, and The N.O.  Picayune, of February 17.  The first gives an auctioneer’s advertisement of the sale of “a negro boy of eighteen years, a negro girl aged sixteen, three horses, saddles, bridles, wheelbarrows,” &c.  Then follows an account of the sale, which reads very much like the description, in the dramatic feuilletons here, of a famous scene in the Case de l’Oncle Tom, as played at the Ambigu Comique.  The second extract is the advertisement of “our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. M.C.G.,” who presents his “respects to the inhabitants of O. and the neighbouring parishes,” and “informs them that he keeps a fine pack of dogs trained to catch negroes,” &c.  It is painful to think that there are men in our country who will write, and that there are others found to publish, such tales as these about our peculiar institution.  I put it to Mr. G., if he thinks it is patriotic.  As a “fellow-citizen,” and in his private relations, G. may be an estimable man, for aught I know, a Christian and a scholar, and an ornament to the social circles of O. and the neighboring parishes.  But as an author, G. becomes public property, and a fair theme for criticism; and in that capacity, I say G. is publishing the shame of his country.  I call him G., without the prefatory Mister, not from any personal disrespect, much as I am grieved at his course as a writer, but because he is now breveted for immortality, and goes down to posterity, like other immortals, without titular prefix.’ [Cheers.] Now, here is where you get the true features of slavery.  What is the reason that the churches, as a general thing, are silent—­that some of them are apologists, and that some, in the extreme Southern States, actually defend slavery, and say it is a good institution, and sanctioned by Scripture?  It is simply this—­the overwhelming power of the slave system; and whence comes that overwhelming power?  It comes from its great influence in the commercial world. [Hear!] Until the time that cotton became so extensively an article of export, there was not a word said in defence of slavery, as far as I know, in the United States.  In 1818, the Presbyterian General Assembly passed resolutions unanimously on the subject of slavery, to which this resolution is mildness itself; and not a man could be found to say one word against it.  But cotton became a most valuable article of export.  In one form and another, it became intimately associated with the commercial