Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/160

126 is dangerous to the exclusive rule of an exclusive class; true, that men must be kept stupid to be kept obedient. What is more consistent, therefore, than that the fundamental liberties should be disregarded whenever they become dangerous; that the safeguards of human rights in the administration of justice should be set aside whenever the emergency calls for prompt and energetic action; that the masses should be left uneducated, in order to give the slaveholding oligarchy an undisputed sway? In one word, that the rights, the liberties and the security of the individual should have to yield to the paramount consideration of the safety of the ruling interest? All this is true; and accepting the premises, all these necessities exist. You seem startled at this proposition and ask, What is the institution that demands for its protection such measures? The slave States are by no means original in this respect. Look at the kingdom of Naples, where the ruling power is governed by similar exclusive interests and acts on the same instinct of self-preservation; does it not resort to the same means? You tell me that the principles underlying our system of government are very different from those of the kingdom of Naples, and that the means of protection I spoke of run contrary to the spirit of our institutions. Indeed, so it seems to be. What does that prove? Simply this: That a social institution which is in antagonism with the principles of democratic government, cannot be maintained and protected by means which are in accordance with those principles; and, on the other hand, that a social institution that cannot be protected by means that are in accordance with the democratic principles of our government, must essentially be in antagonism to those principles. It proves that the people in the slaveholding States, although pretending to be free men, are, by the necessities arising from their condition, the slaves of slavery. That is all.