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36 totally reverse the doctrine and make the tariff a propriety. You may hear another arguing that whilst "thou shalt not kill" is the true law in morals and religion, yet killing may become a propriety, an imperative duty, in certain circumstances. And so of innumerable other principles, and less or more of all principles, certainly of all belonging to terrestrial relations. And yet these men seize hold of the abstraction that "all men being free and equal, and having certain inalienable rights, the holding of a man in bondage is a sin and a shame," and try to run it like a red-hot ploughshare through society, in utter defiance of all attending and modifying circumstances; and they would rip up, run over, and plough under, the very foundations of every structure, sacred, civil, and social, as savagely and remorselessly as a madman gashes the bodies of the members of his own family. Such a spirit, if allowed to become dominant, would transform this earth into a slaughter-house, and drive the race of man to such a pitch of infatuated wretchedness as never has been reached in the most disastrous times. From the character of its results, so far as felt, you easily perceive its virulent and dissolving tendency. Behold the sectional animosities it has called into being, and the fierce, unbrotherly feelings, words, and acts, of which it has been the author. Its hot temper scalds whatever it touches. Look into its newspapers, and you find such a satanic rage as is evinced in no other quarter, except the fountainhead, enter its meetings, and see the ravings and