Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/164

130 foreign immigrant in the territories of the immediate enjoyment of political rights, which in the primitive state of social organization are essential to his existence. All this in order to give slavery a chance to obtain possession of our national domain. This may seem rather hard. But can you deny that slavery for its own protection needs power in the general government; and that it cannot obtain that power except by increased representation; and that it cannot increase its representation except by conquest and extension over the territories; and that with this policy all measures are incompatible, which bid fair to place the territories into the hands of free labor?

This is not all. Listen to the slaveholder once more: “Our States,” he tells us, “are essentially agricultural, producing States. We have but little commerce, and still less manufacturing industry. All legislation tending principally to benefit the commercial and manufacturing interests is, therefore, to our immediate prejudice. It will oblige us to contribute to the growth and prosperity of the free States at our expense, and consequently turn the balance of political power still more against us. We are, therefore, obliged to demand that all attempts by Federal legislation to promote the industrial interest be given up.” Nothing more logical. The system of slave labor has never permitted them to recognize and develop the harmony of agricultural, commercial and industrial pursuits. What is more natural than that they should seek to give the peculiar economic interest in which their superiority consists, the preponderance in our economic policy? Hence their unrelenting opposition to all legislation tending to develop the peculiar resources of the free States.

Here let us pause. Is there nothing strange or surprising in all this? You may call it madness, but there is method in this madness. The slave power is