Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/159

Rh guardians of the system. Hence our safety requires that the political power in our States should be put into the hands of the slaveholders; and where we have no law to that effect, custom upholds the rule.

“In order to put the political ascendency of those who are most interested in the preservation of slavery upon a solid basis, we must put down everything that would produce and foster independent aspirations among the other classes of society. It would not only be insane to educate the slaves, but highly dangerous to extend to the great mass of poor white non-slaveholders the means of education; for in doing so we might raise an element to influence and power whose interests are not identical with those of the slaveholder. This is our policy of self-preservation, and we are bound to enforce it.”

Sir, I mean to be just to the slaveholders, and, strange as it may sound, as to the propriety of their policy, I agree with them. Having identified their social existence with the existence of slavery, they cannot act otherwise.

It is necessity that urges them on. It is true that slavery is an inflammable element. A stray spark of thought or hope may cause a terrible conflagration. The torch of free speech and free press, which gives light to the house of liberty, is very apt to set on fire the house of slavery. What is more natural than that the torch should be extinguished, where there is such an abundance of explosive material?

It is true that in a slaveholding community the strictest subordination must be enforced, that the maintenance of established order requires the most rigorous, preventive and repressive measures, which will not always allow a strict observance of the rules of legal process; it is equally true that the making and the execution of the laws can be safely intrusted only to those who, by their position, are bound to the ruling interest; true, that popular