the ‘robbery’ proposed by the bill, other than the concomitants of slavery, that have robbed the colored man from generation to generation, not only of his toil, but of every practical motive TO BE A MAN?  It would be needless, however, to discuss the question of the colored man’s capacity to improve, were it not for considerations that now make it necessary, under national calamity, to take it into truthful account.  The white man’s cultivation of barbarity under the teachings of slaveholders has hitherto proved an overmatch for the colored man’s claims in the abstract.  Things and conditions are now changed.  The slaveholders’ rebellion has softened the obduracy of manufactured prejudice, and necessity has become allied with humanity.  Tho pro-slavery spirit in politics is now discovered to be little short of a demon—­a snake’s egg that hatches treason.  The American mind is nearly forced to the conclusion, that as long as colored women are compelled to breed slaves, their white mistresses will continue to breed rebels.  Slavery, of course, must yield to the necessity of national security.  A remnant may exist for a while, and linger through modifications of a broken and hopeless pro-slavery prestige, the duration depending entirely upon the disposition of slaveholders to become subordinated to law.  Perpetuation, however, has become a word that has no meaning in connection with the duration of slavery.  The word in that sense has become obsolete; and what shall become of the colored man, and how shall he be treated, is, and is to be, the sequence of the conspiracy to overthrow the jurisdiction of the Government.  It being established that the pro-slavery spirit, by nature, is the antagonist of the democratic principle—­the antagonist of the interests of the masses, the hot-bed for the cultivation of brutality, devoid of fidelity, and a rebel by practice, it has become an intolerable element of national weakness.  We can not avoid the inquiry, now to be made on the basis of humanity:  Can the colored man, by proper and just encouragement, be converted into an element of patriotism and national strength?

What is the solution of the riddle as it respects the strength of democratic government?  It has heretofore been said by the revilers of the masses in America, that ’for two hundred years the scum, the crime, and poverty of Europe have been cast upon the shores of the Atlantic.’  It is immaterial to the question of humanity, whether such has been the seed from which a new nation has been raised up in the wilderness.  A few months since, ‘Democracy on its trial,’ was the favorite theme of democracy-haters in Europe.  The indictment against our free institutions was freighted with fearful charges.  The government of the Union was a ‘delusive Utopia.’  ‘The people of the North had degenerated into a mob.’  ’Society was drifting into the maelstrom of anarchy, and law and order becoming extinct.’  A little time, and an apparently unwarlike people had changed into an astonishing organization,