efforts made by the church, the government, and the people at
large, to stay the onward progress of this movment, its course
has been onward, steady, straight, unshaken, and unchecked from
the beginning.  Slavery has gained victories large and numerous;
but never as against this movement--against a temporizing policy,
and against northern timidity, the slave power has been
victorious; but against the spread and prevalence in the country,
of a spirit of resistance to its aggression, and of sentiments
favorable to its entire overthrow, it has yet accomplished
nothing.  Every measure, yet devised and executed, having for its
object the suppression of anti-slavery, has been as idle and
fruitless as pouring oil to extinguish fire.  A general rejoicing
took place on the passage of "the compromise measures" of 1850. 
Those measures were called peace measures, and were afterward
termed by both the great parties of the country, as well as by
leading statesmen, a final settlement of the whole question of
slavery; but experience has laughed to scorn the wisdom of pro-
slavery statesmen; and their final settlement of agitation seems
to be the final revival, on a broader and grander scale than ever
before, of the question which they vainly attempted to suppress
forever.  The fugitive slave bill has especially been of positive
service to the anti-slavery movement.  It has illustrated before
all the people the horrible character of slavery toward the
slave, in hunting him down in a free state, and tearing him away
from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher than
marriage or parental claims.  It has revealed the arrogant and
overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states;
despising their principles--shocking their feelings of humanity,
not only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but
by attempting to make them parties to the crime.  It has called
into exercise among the colored people, the hunted ones, a spirit
of manly resistance well calculated to surround them with a
bulwark of sympathy and respect hitherto unknown.  For men are
always disposed to respect and defend rights, when the victims of
oppression stand up manfully for themselves.

There is another element of power added to the anti-slavery
movement, of great importance; it is the conviction, becoming
every day more general and universal, that slavery must be
abolished at the south, or it will demoralize and destroy liberty
at the north.  It is the nature of slavery to beget a state of
things all around it favorable to its own continuance.  This
fact, connected with the system of bondage, is beginning to be
more fully realized.  The slave-holder is not satisfied to
associate with men in the church or in the state, unless he can
thereby stain them with the blood of his slaves.  To be a slave-
holder is to be a propagandist from necessity; for slavery can
only live by keeping down the under-growth morality which nature
supplies.  Every new-born white babe comes armed from the Eternal
presence, to make war on slavery.  The heart of pity, which would
melt in due time over the brutal chastisements it sees inflicted
on the helpless, must be hardened.  And this work goes on every
day in the year, and every hour in the day.

What is done at home is being done also abroad here in the north. 
And even now the question may be asked, have we at this moment a
single free state in the Union?  The alarm at this point will
become more general.  The slave power must go on in its
career of exactions.  Give, give, will be its cry, till the
timidity which concedes shall give place to courage, which shall
resist.  Such is the voice of experience, such has been the past,
such is the present, and such will be that future, which, so sure
as man is man, will come.  Here I leave the subject; and I leave
off where I began, consoling myself and congratulating the
friends of freedom upon the fact that the anti-slavery cause is
not a new thing under the sun; not some moral delusion which a
few years' experience may dispel.  It has appeared among men in
all ages, and summoned its advocates from all ranks.  Its
foundations are laid in the deepest and holiest convictions, and
from whatever soul the demon, selfishness, is expelled, there
will this cause take up its abode.  Old as the everlasting hills;
immovable as the throne of God; and certain as the purposes of
eternal power, against all hinderances, and against all delays,
and despite all the mutations of human instrumentalities, it is
the faith of my soul, that this anti-slavery cause will triumph.

[The end]