Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/360

Rh the most sensible thing you can do, my friends. If any one murmurs, I will kill him with a word. I am a pro-slavery man, and I hate abolitionism. I will neither hear it spoken of, nor the emancipation of the slaves. But when you come and assert that your slaves have souls, and that they are capable of voting against free men—come, gentlemen, that is quite too foolish an idea, quite too irrational, because you have shown both by word and deed that negroes have no souls, and that they ought to be regarded as brute beasts. Talk here, talk there, talk as much as you like, nobody can talk me down!” Thus does Mr. Weise talk and perorate the length and breadth of the capitol at Richmond, with so much boldness and so much rude wit and jocularity, that he puts all opposition out of the question; and at the same time that he seems to favour slavery, he exhibits all the contradictions and the enormities to which it leads. This speech has caused great excitement at this moment, and the columns of the newspapers are full of it.

Through the newspapers is also made known at this time occurrences in Virginia, which more than anything else seem to speak powerfully against an institution which evidently undermines the morals and good sense of the white people, by allowing in their youth the indulgence of arbitrary and despotic passion. At Lynchburg, a large city in Virginia, two young men, both editors of newspapers, have just now shot each other with pistols in the open street. A little while ago they had a newspaper quarrel, in which they threatened each other. They met one morning accidentally, and without agreement or preparation, at once fired at each other with an intent to kill. The one died the same day, the other is mortally wounded. Both were newly married, one only within a few weeks.

The second tragedy is a case of elopement. A young Dr. Williams loved a Miss Morris. Her father and