office of Vice President, a station of high dignity, but of little other than contingent power, had been usually, by their indulgence, conceded to a citizen of the other section; but even this political courtesy was superseded at the election before the last, and both the offices of President and Vice President of the United States were, by the preponderancy of slave-holding votes, bestowed upon citizens of two adjoining and both slave-holding States. At this moment the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Chief Justice of the United States, are all citizens of that favored portion of the united republic. The last of these offices, being, under the constitution, held by the tenure of good behaviour, has been honored and dignified by the occupation of the present incumbent upwards of thirty years. An overruling sense of the high responsibilities under which it is held, has effectually guarded him from permitting the sectional slave-holding spirit to ascend the tribunal of justice; and it is not difficult to discern, in this inflexible impartiality, the source of the obloquy which that same spirit has not been inactive in attempting to excite against the Supreme Court of the United States itself; and of the insuperable aversion of the votaries of nullification to encounter or abide by the decision of that tribunal, the true and legitimate umpire of constitutional, controverted law."[1]
It is worthy of observation that this slave representation is always used to protect and extend slave power; and in this way, the slaves themselves are made to vote for slavery: they are compelled to furnish halters to hang their posterity.
Machiavel says that "the whole politics of rival states consist in checking the growth of one another." It is sufficiently obvious, that the slave and free States are, and must be, rivals, owing to the inevitable contradiction of their interests. It needed no Machiavel to predict the result. A continual strife has been going on, more or less earnest, according to the nature of the interests it involved, and the South has always had strength and
- ↑ It seems to me that a political pamphlet was never written with more ability, clearness, and moderation, than Mr Adams's Report on the Tariff.
