The time has come when the American people, from necessity, must analyze to their root the whole aptitudes and incidents of slavery.  They are now obliged to deal with it, unbridled by the check-rein of its apologists.  Under the best behavior of slaveholders, the institution could not rise above the point of bare toleration.  There is so much inherent in the system that will not bear analysis, so much of collateral mischief, so much tending to overturn and discourage the principles of justice that ought to be interwoven into the relationships of society, that it is impossible for the ingenuous mind to advocate slavery per se.  It is not, however, to the bare dominion itself, that the objection is exclusively raised up.  It is the inevitable result of that dominion, in connection with the worst cultivated passions of human nature, that the exception is more broadly taken.  The dominion of the master over the slave involves in a great measure the necessary dominion over the persons and interests of the balance of society where it exists.  The lust of power on the part of slaveholders, and on the part of the privileged classes in Europe, in nature, is the same.  The determination through the artificial arrangements of power, to subsist on the toil of others, is the same.  The arrogant assumption of the right to maintain as privilege what originated in atrocious wrong, is the same.  The disposition to crush by force any attempt to vindicate natural rights, or to modify the status of society under the severity of oppression, is the same; and no tyranny has yet been found so tenacious or objectionable as the tyranny of a class held together by the ’bond of iniquity.’  Our forefathers had a just conception of the nature of the case, on one hand, when they interdicted by fundamental law the establishment of any order of nobility.  Many of them were sorely distressed at the contemplation of slavery on the other hand, in connection with its probable results upon the national welfare.  Our calamity is but the fulfillment of their prophecies.  They well knew the nature of the evil we have to deal with.

It is matter of astonishment to most minds that slaveholders should have contemplated the bold venture of subordinating the Democratic principle in government.  It will be less astonishing, however, when it is duly considered that it is utterly impossible for Democracy and Slavery to abide long together.  The one or the other must ere long have been prostrated under the laws of population, and it is not very likely that the twenty-seven millions and their increase would consent to be subordinated to the policy of three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders.  Slavery must exist as the ruling political power, or it can not long exist at all.  This the slaveholders well knew; hence the necessity of fortifying itself through some political arrangement against the Democratic power of the masses.