exact constitutional principles, and carefully aiming to include and regard the rights, interests, and feelings of all the people of the whole country, they must, if they are patriots, agree to be silent. They can devise nothing so good, in the Union; if they would carry their point out of the Union, let them dare openly to say SO. It is time they were understood.

It is just as pernicious to charge, too, that those men who, with calm judgment and a wise foresight, espouse this policy, in our present critical situation,-known as the policy of NON INTERVENTION,-are therefore disposed to favor the spread and wider establishment of the institution of Negro Slavery, or are even so much as indifferent to its spread and establishment; they simply declare their unwillingness to become a meddlesome party to a question that is to be settled solely by their fellowcitizens in the Territories, feeling sure that the latter will, in good time, adjust all questions to their own peaceful and permanent satisfaction. They further declare, in the spirit of a true and generous patriotism, their unwillingness to involve this freest republic on the globe in a quarrel that, to-day, threatens all our more precious institutions with a common ruin. Unquestionably they entertain their individual opinions on the subject, each and all of them; but they sternly refuse to thrust in those opinions where they have no right, and where, too, they can work only the widest and wildest mischief.

Foremost among all our public men and statesmen of to-day, STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS represents and embodies in his career this safe and sound political doctrine of Non-Intervention. No man living has more boldly, unflinchingly, and consistently upheld it and defended it, in all its length and breadth. He has shown that neither the flattery of friends nor the opposition of foes could for a moment shake his steadfastness where steadfastness was above all things necessary. He, pre-eminently, seems to have conceived the high patriotic spirit in which the foundations of this broad policy were laid; and, in the defence of its leading points and the thorough comprehension of its underlying principles, he has proved his perfect ability, as a statesman, to cope with the difficulties of one of the most dangerous issues that has beset us, in the whole course of our political history.

The doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, which is the legitimate fruit of this rule of NonIntervention, has been flouted and ridiculed by the political gamblers who realize how perfectly it blocks the wicked game, in which they play with the happiness of more than thirty millions of people as a stake; they call it the hard name of an empty and sounding Abstraction!-as if it were no more than one of their own base and unworthy political tricks, instead of the great and enduring principle on which such men as Clay and Webster, Cass and Calhoun, believed this Negro Question could be settled forever!

If it is nothing more than an abstraction, of course there is no use in talking about reducing it to practice. Now will any one, who is not yet wholly delivered over to insanity, tell us if the Republican plan of legislating slavery out of the Territories can ever be put in practice under our present form of government? Or if the fire-eating doctrine of legislating Slavery into the Territories can be put in practice, either? And if they cannot, then how can it be made out that both of these extreme parties are not themselves abstractionists,—and that the policy of Non-Intervention is not the only practical policy and doctrine as yet proposed?

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Suppose the Republicans do elect their President; what are they going to do next? they pass laws in Congress, which their Chief Executive will stand ready to enforce, with the whole army and navy of the United States at his back, forbidding slaveholders to take their slaves into the common Territories, when the highest Court of the nation has decided that they may? On this single issue, even if they could elect their President, the Republi can party could not carry a working majority in either branch of Congress; and the only prac tical measure remaining-that of Non-Intervention, would have to be finally adopted. Besides, the Republicans have already accepted and indorsed this very policy of NonIntervention; they deliberately voted in Congress, under the Crittenden-Montgomery Bill, to remand back to the people of Kansas the so-called "Lecompton Constitution," and solemnly agreed that if the people declared for the establishment of slavery in their midst, they should have it,—but otherwise, not! Here, then, is an open and deliberate adoption of the policy of Non-Intervention on the part of the Republicans; it seems it was no mere abstraction two years ago, whatever they may agree for party purposes to call it to-day. And further than this, one of their prominent Senators, about the same time, introduced a bill into the Senate, giving the people of Arizona authority to elect all their territorial officers, from the Governor downwards! It surely must have been a queer abstraction, that promised to be so popular and to work so well. Have they dropped it, then, from patriotic, or from selfish and sectional motives? Is it any more of an abstraction now, than it was then? the other hand,-could the Secessionists and Disunionists carry out their scheme for a Slave Code in the Territories? Never. The North would no more consent to that than the South would to the Republican plan of legislation. No sane man seriously thinks of such a thing. Besides, if the South insist on congressional legislation for Slavery, its protest against congressional legislation inimical to Slavery at once loses its whole force; all interference with the subject, on the part of Congress, has long ago been declared, both by Congress and the people of the country, full of mischief and practically impossible. The leading men of all sides have so agreed to consider it. Here,

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man to do for himself what shall be both right and for his highest interests,—and in the second place, that we are bound to make and keep men free from sin even against their own choice; this last is mere casuistry, and has nothing to do with politics. Politics is no ab

This Non-Intervention policy, too, is something of a positive nature; it is not a mere negation, like a profession of general philanthropy without any ability to reduce itself to practice; nor, on the other hand, is it a demand, made in the spirit of a threat, that a peculiar kind of property, existing only by the law of certain localities, shall receive government protection where it can neither claim nor obtain it. The two factions that stand in such hostile attitudes over against one another put forth pretensions that can never be realized, and which they know can never be realized; while here is a broad, sound, safe, and positive measure, already agreed to once by both factions that are now engaged in opposing it, and squarely indorsed by the whole country in the Presidential years of 1852 and 1856. We hazard nothing in the assertion that this same statesmanlike measure will receive its third and final popular indorsement in the coming Fall election, and that the reliable statesman who has so courageously held all parties alike to their own sacred pledge and covenant, will be triumphantly selected to see that the legal provisions of that measure are every where faithfully and religiously executed.

The people cannot go over this ground thus hastily outlined in the above remarks, too often or with too much thoroughness. It has come to that point at last, where each one of us must sit down to ask himself in all seriousness if we can live together in peace any longer; and if it be possible, then upon' what terms and conditions? The time demands the services of no mere politicians, but of statesmen only; publicists of large, varied, and thorough experience, who understand men, and comprehend the interests and sentiments of all parts of the country, and would see exact justice done to all alike.

Reflection will only make the solution proposed for our present difficulties more plain and simple to every man's comprehension. The scheme of Non-Intervention is perfectly clear to the common mind,-wears no air of fraud or trickery, has not the remotest resemblance to sectionalism, and, best and chiefest of all, asserts over again the perfect capability of man, under a free government, to fashion and establish his own political institutions. The objection so eagerly made to it, that we neglect our duty in neglecting to keep slavery out of

practicability conceivable. Moreover, if a citizen of any free State entertains so conscientious a concern about keeping slave labor out of the Territories, all he has got to do is simply to show his conscientiousness by removing into them at once, and fairly and openly doing what he can, and what he would have an undoubted right to do, to forward the desire nearest his heart. He would be especially anxious to do this, too, if he knew that thus he could not only strike a blow at Slavery, but perpetuate the unity and peace of the States also. Far from us would be the desire to influence his fixed opinion, or to cavil at his entertaining whatever opinions on the subject to him might seem best; we would do nothing. more than suggest to him a practical, and still a peaceful, mode of furthering the aims by which he has set so large a store.

It is worth while to consider, also, that if we scout so fair, so constitutional, so democratic, and so thoroughly safe a mode of adjusting an overgrown evil at this time, on the plausible, but very untenable, ground that it is our duty to protect the new Territories against such an evil as slavery, and thus make the matter secure against all possible chances and mischances in the future, we manifestly publish our belief that the citizens of the several States, in going to reside in the Territories, have parted in some mysterious way with the capacity they clearly possessed, in the States, for self-government, and are less fitted, as citizens of the Territories than as citizens of the States, to administer affairs of higher interest to themselves than to any other persons living! The very statement is sufficient to betray a shaken, if not a tottering, faith in the perpetuity of self-government, and so, of course, in the progress and exaltation of the human race. When once we declare, or even feel, a timid fear lest our citizens cannot take better care of themselves than any fostering government establishments at a distance can for them, we may as well say farewell to every thing else; for, surely, the moment the people themselves are incapable of being trusted, all else has gone by the board. It was against just this paralyzing timidity on the part of those who happened to be associated with our government at the time, that Jefferson boldly took and courageously maintained the stand he did, signalizing his career as a public man as that of no other public man has been signalized in our history. It was he who laid the corner-stone of true Democracy in the immortal Declaration of Independence; and, happily for us as a people, his faith in man

never wavered, nor did his courage fail from the day on which his hand drafted that sacred chart of popular liberty till the grave finally shielded him from the venomous vituperation of his natural enemies.

It is folly to plead the duty of interference, either on moral or pecuniary grounds, where the duty of no interference is so obvious. No man of capacity for reflection can deny that his highest duty is toward the larger results; and these demand, both on the score of peace and permanent advantage, simply that we shall not arrogantly attempt to legislate where legislation can work nothing but mischief. Is it such a hard thing, that, having a political machine at our hands which we call Congress, we must forbear tampering and meddling where we can do no possible good? Is it always the best way to assert authority, whether we possess it or no, lest we may somehow be chargeable with not having any? And are we so very sure that we are responsible to such an extent for the conduct of our brethren in the Territories, that we must needs fashion their institutions after our own individual spirit and pattern? And, farther than that still, do we know that we understand their wants as sovereign citizens of a young Territory, better than they understand them? Or, finally, are they not as capable of taking care of the slavery question while in a Territorial condition, as when they afterwards come to form themselves into a State ?

A very plain and ready thought will serve to dissolve the entanglement and perplexity in which many well-minded men have suffered themselves to be involved, relative to the adjustment of the whole subject. It is this: in politics, the important question is not, what, in this man's opinion, or that man's opinion, ought to be done, but-what, under all the circumstances and obediently, of course, to the operation of certain great underlying principles, can be done? If we can only fix upon an answer to this inquiry, and still preserve the spirit and follow the sense of those cardinal principles from which we draw national life and sustenance, there is an end to all our present difficulties. But if government is to be used as a missionary organ for the propagation of this doctrine of morals, or that glittering heresy, it is manifest that, in a democracy, government has ceased to subserve the just purpose of its establishment. The true democratic idea is, that "mankind is governed too much;" and it is a fatal error for us as a people to fall into, to expect the general government to inculcate a special code of morals, or furnish protection to a particular species of property, rather than to leave the inhabitants of each separate locality to do this, or even not do it, for themselves. However strong may be the inclination to have our brethren in the Territories as free from guile, at least, as we believe we are ourselves, it is no part of the duty of the general government to give itself any care about such concerns. Its

offices are exceedingly few and jealously limited, and its entire authority is derived from nothing but the first grants and concessions of the people themselves; therefore it cannot thrust itself in with impunity, and rarely with a healthy effect, between the people and their own clear and lasting interests.

It is high time, moreover, we had a settled and permanent TERRITORIAL SYSTEM. Our experience under the operation of the broad, democratic principles that give us national life, has certainly suggested the outline of such a system, even if it has not established a platform for the same already. We know very well that, thus far, States have been admitted into the confederacy with institutions of their own selection, and it is beyond all question that they will continue to come into the common family on the same terms, whether Congress passes the intermediate time in factious wrangling about them or not. Thus has Popular Sovereignty always vindicated itself at last, as, in this country, it always must. And this being the case, it is simply proposed now to establish a permanent Territorial System on that very basis, the only one that is either consonant with the principles of our government, or acceptable to the masses in all sections of the country. The need of it is apparent enough; if nothing else went to prove it, the present condition of affairs would certainly furnish testimony of an overwhelming character. live along together in this chronic state of wrangling and quarreling, with this inflammation of passions and constant excitement of bad blood between the two sections, is morally impossible; it must end in a fatal explosion, if it be much longer continued. Those who know and understand best about the ordinary characteristics of human nature, are well enough convinced on this point; they feel certain that this dangerous game between selfish political factions can be played with impunity no longer.

To

Divested of its unimportant and impracticable issues, the only question involved in relation to the Territories is, after all, whether Congress possesses the power to form political institutions for the people anywhere. It is admitted that the Constitution vests in Congress the care of the public lands, empowering that body both to protect them from foreign hands and to dispose of them for the largest popular benefit; but it is utterly denied that Congress can create institutions for the settlers, whether of one kind or another. That peculiar and highly important work they must do for themselves, and none others can do it for them. This single great fact cannot be gainsayed by any political party or faction in the country. For, the moment another body, like Congress, for example, assumes to establish the political condition of the inhabitants of an inchoate State, that moment the inhabitants of that same State become mere subjects; their domain is no more than an outlying dependency of an arrogant central government; they

exist only as they have political authority | delegated to them,-by a body, too, that has no political authority to delegate,-instead of being prima facie sovereigns over Congress, and over every other created political body known under our Constitution.

And is this, we seriously ask, the limit and extent of our liberties? How comes it that Congress can organize institutions, or constitutions, for any of us? Whence was its power derived? Being only a creation itself, and not a creator, it must of course have been invested with so high an authority. But when? where? If by the people themselves, then it is plain that the people are the true sovereigns, after all; but if not by the people, then it follows that the authority was assumed in the first place. One or the other of these alternatives must be accepted.

If, then, as we must finally admit, Congress derives all the powers it may properly exercise from the hands of the people, and if the people, therefore, are alone sovereign, where is the inconsistency in the position that the people, rather than Congress, shall take the formation of their political institutions into their own hands? Or where is the hardship, except to interested politicians, in settling the present troubles in this sound, constitutional, and thoroughly democratic manner? Those who object, do it because it is too short and easy a method of securing peace, for their hopes of political favor and preferment; or because it terminates an exciting controversy, through the continuance of which they hoped, in good time, to work the overthrow of a great national fabric too mighty for them to control. It would be the best policy to adopt, this new Territorial Policy, if it were only for the sake of bringing each of these sets of reckless political gamblers to nought.

It is very certain that no American Congress can again pass such restrictions as the Missouri Compromise, whether in the interest of slave labor or free. The day for that sort of things has gone by. We may combine to elect such Congresses as we choose, either North or South; but when the question is brought before them, if indeed it ever shall be again, whether they will interfere to prohibit one thing or to establish another, it will be found that no body of representatives will venture to interpose their opinions and prejudices between the actual settlers and their preferences. No fact is plainer, or more emphatic, than this; and he who has not yet got his eyes open to observe it, must needs confess himself ignorant of the whole temper and tendency of public affairs in the country. No political party can hope to come into power, that fears to inscribe a doctrine like this upon its banner, in letters large and legible; for the people have set their stamp of approval upon the same, and they have not yet learned to forget that they are sovereign.

Let Congress protect and dispose of the soil, acting merely as trustee for the several States

whose property it is in common; and let it exercise, under the charter of the Constitution, all that authority which is necessary to the fullest protection and fairest disposal of the public domain, with a view solely to its early settlement by citizens from all the States alike; but here let the work of Congress cease; it can go no farther; it cannot erect political communities, nor found institutions of any sort for such communities; it may deal temporarily with the external property, but it cannot say that the people who buy it and settle upon it shall, or shall not, form themselves into such political communities as they are allowed to form, under the broad provisions of the common Constitution. Here the final stand must be taken,-has been taken already. This shall constitute the dividing line, over which the people of the country insist that no Congresses ought, or shall dare, to go. If we respect this division, we may continue our national existence in amity and peace; otherwise, there must be broils and contentions till the "bitter end," so long desired of fanatics on both sides, shall finally come.

The Republicans, as they take their present position, not only declare that slavery shall not go into the Territories at all, but that it shall be kept out in only one way; and that way, by Congressional legislation! Here it is. they show themselves totally impracticable; unless they can remove an evil by a process patented by themselves, which is sure to entail many worse evils in its operation, they prefer not to remove it at all; it will serve them a better turn, they think, as a topic for inflammatory and mischievous harangues! Such a temper argues but little for the genuineness of their professed philanthropy, to charge no more. They betray the suspicious fact that they are more solicitous about the mode of preventing, or curing, an evil than they are about the one serious fact of preventing, or curing, it. Now if it has become apparent that slavery can never be established in, or kept out of a Territory by an Act of Congress, and that the very discussion of it puts the matter farther away from the possibility of adjustment than ever,—is it not the best proof of sincerity the Republicans can give, to be willing to adopt such a measure as shall be practical, and at the same time effective and permanent? To stand out for an impossibility, especially when the stubbornness is attended with so much actual danger to the whole Union, is no less an act of crime than it is of folly, and stamps those who are guilty of it as men not safe to be either followed or trusted.

The people of the Territories themselves will settle the matter; of that we have every needed assurance. And, what is better, they will so settle it that their posterity to the latest generations will be satisfied with their decision. That is something. But if slavery, or any other local institution, should be either established among them, or denied to them by

the authority of Congress, occasions would arise in the future without number, when it would be charged that no distant political body had any right to perform this business for them; and it would even be insisted that their decision was not binding. The Congressional mode is liable to this objection always, even if to none more immediately serious. It would ever be open, too, to the charge of corrupt legislation, since the men are few whose votes could not be influenced by some sort of pressure, either in one way or the other, without regard to the settlers at all.

Are the politicians and factionists, then, afraid to trust the people,- to let them alone with their own affairs? Is this the first fruits of our boasted system of government, that just when and where the people themselves can restore a peace so long unknown, their arrogating leaders concede that they are not willing to trust them? Have the people, then, so grossly degenerated? Are they less competent to-day to manage their own local concerns than they were in the time of Jefferson? Is it indeed true that the ancient virtues have gone out of them? Are they not quite as competent to decide whether slave labor is, or is not, good for them, as any Congress can be? And if they are not, then how is Congress to be more so?- the same body that receives all its authority from the people, and could not even claim an existence unless the people first spoke it into being?

This distrust of the popular virtue, and the popular capacity, presages the certain decay and death of the political party that indulges it. It ought to do so in a government like this. If faith diminishes in that direction, the sheetanchor is gone. Thus far in our history, a lack of such faith has been fatal to those who sought to manage and direct public affairs without it; and we are assured that it will always work the same result in the future. And it is just as true on the other hand, that whenever an issue of the highest magnitude has been fairly presented to the people for their disposal, their clear instincts and intelligent judgment have found a ready solution for all perplexities and entanglements. The people being masters, it is proper that their servants, when unable to adjust difficulties of a most threatening nature, should deferentially refer them back to their wiser discretion and final disposal. For when the people in this country have once settled a question, it may be considered settled forever. They are above bribery or corruption, and they understand their own interests best.

We have just entered upon the THIRD ERA in the Political History of the country. Every nation has a tidal ebb and flow in its affairs, marked by certain events that remain indelibly written on the pages of its history. The First Era in our political life, after we had seriously entered upon the experiment of a Constitutional existence, was in the time of

JEFFERSON,-that pure and placid patriot and most thorough of all Democrats. Dissensions were frequent and radical in the cabinet of the First President, between the timid element that always looked backward over its shoulder to the English Constitution as the perfection of human wisdom, and the other element that put full faith in the capacity of the people for self-government. It was the spirit of the former that interposed a frame-work, called an Electoral College, between the people and their highest rulers, because it was afraid to trust them directly with so imposing a responsibility. The same element has run through all our history till the present time. Jefferson stood forth the representative of the other element. He firmly believed in man's ability to create his own institutions, a doctrine that is rapidly making its way in Europe, while a party in our own country dispute and deny it as a similar party disputed and denied it before! It was the clear and powerful pen of Jefferson that did more than any voice or word, in those days, to drive out the pernicious monarchical element from our national councils, and establish the broad and enduring democratic principle, which has stood through evil report and good report unshaken to this day.

The SECOND ERA occurred under Jackson. He found the popular will largely interfered with, and sought to be entirely controlled, by the overshadowing Money Power, wielded by a party that opposed, because they could not use him; and such advancement had already been made to this end, through the legislative process, as to excite serious fears in the minds of those who reposed their hopes for freedom in the unbiassed expression of the popular will. Without pausing to count the cost, the old hero entered the lists at once, threw the whole weight of his character into the contest, and fought courageously for the people and popular rights until complete victory was secured. This was the long-to-be-remembered war with the gigantic Money Power,-a transplanted aristocracy-that openly bribed or defied our public men for its own ends, and essayed to undermine the plainest rights of the people through the forms of legislation.

The THIRD ERA is this day upon us. It is signalized by a consolidated attempt of extremists, factionists, and sectionalists everywhereNorth and South alike—to force upon the people, for purely selfish purposes, a system of legislation that would take their inherent power out of their own hands, and, in short, make Congress superior to its creators. As in the two other eras, it is a deliberate and desperate effort to curtail the people of their own naturally derived power, on one side, from motives of passion and fanaticism, leading to nothing practical, or permanent, or wise,—and, on the other, from motives mainly of selfishness, and a spirit that would either "rule or ruin." But both sides are agreed on this point,—that they are in pursuit of power; and this they do not