Page:The address of the people of South Carolina assembled in convention, to the people of the slaveholding states of the United States.djvu/15

Rh power—what check can there be, in the unrestrained counsels of the North, to emancipation? There is sympathy in association, which carries men along without principle; but when there is principle—and that principle is fortified by long-existing prejudices and feelings, association is omnipotent in party influences. In spite of all disclaimers and professions, there can he but one end by the submission of the South, to the rule of a sectional anti-slavery government at Washington; and that end, directly or indirectly, must be—the emancipation of the slaves of the South. The hypocrisy of thirty years—the faithlessness of their whole course from the commencement of our union with them, shew that the people of the non-slaveholding North, are not, and cannot be safe associates of the slaveholding South, under a common Government. Not only their fanaticism, but their erroneous views of the principles of free governments, render it doubtful whether, if separated from the South, they can maintain a free government amongst themselves. Numbers with them, is the great element of free government. A majority, is infallible and omnipotent. "The right divine to rule in kings," is only transferred to their majority. The very object of all Constitutions, in free popular Government, is to restrain the majority. Constitutions, therefore, according to their theory, must be most unrighteous inventions, restricting liberty. None ought to exist; but the body politic ought simply to have a political organization, to bring out and enforce the will of the majority. This theory may be harmless in a small community, having identity of interests and pursuits; but over a vast State—still more, over a vast Confederacy, having various and conflicting interests and pursuits, it is a remorseless despotism. In resisting it, as applicable to