Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/82

 pretension was not blasted at once by the Declaration of Independence, when it announced that "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and as if anywhere within the jurisdiction of the Constitution, which contains no sentence, phrase, or word, sanctioning this outrage, and which carefully excludes the idea of property in man, while it surrounds all persons with the highest safeguards of a citizen, such pretension could exist. Whatever it may be elsewhere, Popular Sovereignty within the sphere of the Constitution has its limitations. Claiming for all the largest liberty of a true Civilization, it compresses all within the constraints of Justice; nor does it allow any man to assert a right to do what he pleases, except when he pleases to do right. As well within the Territories attempt to make a King as attempt to makeaslave. But this pretension — rejected alike by every Slave-master and by every lover of Freedom —

 Where I behold a factious band agree To call it freedom when themselves are free,

proceeding originally from a vain effort to avoid the impending question between Freedom and Slavery — assuming a delusive phrase of Freedom as a cloak for Slavery — speaking with the voice of Jacob while its hands are the hands of Esau — and, by its plausible nick-name, enabling politicians sometimes to deceive the public, and sometimes even to deceive themselves — may be dismissed with the other kindred pretensions for Slavery, while the Senator from Illinois, [,] who, if not its inventor, has been its boldest defender, will learn that Slave-masters, for whom he has done so much, can not afford to be generous; that their gratitude is founded on what they expect, and not on what they have received; and, that having its root in desire rather than in fruition, it necessarily withers and dies with the power to serve them. The Senator, revolving these things in his mind, may confess the difficulty of his position, and, perhaps,

 remember Milo's end, Wedged in that Timber which he strove to rend.

And here I close this branch of the argument, which I have treated less fully than the first, partly because time and strength fail me, but chiefly because the Barbarism of Slavery, when fully established, supersedes all other inquiry. But enough