acteristic pluck he takes the wolf by the ears. The charge being, that the power of the Slave States has been gaining a steady preponderance over that of the Free States by means of the federal administration, he answers it by saying that he has made it a subject of "philosophic study," and has found that Massachusetts has had a "pretty fair run of the power of the Union,"—whatever that may be. The phrase is unfortunate, for it reminds one too much of the handsome competence with which a father once claimed to have endowed his son in giving him the run of the streets since he was able to go alone. But let us test Mr. Cushing's logic by an equivalent proposition. He is executor, we will suppose, of an estate to be divided among sixteen heirs; he pays A his portion, and claims a discharge in full. What would not Mr. Buchanan give for a receipt by which office-seekers could be so cheaply satisfied!
"Philosophic study," to be sure! It may be easy for gentlemen, the chief part of whose productive industry has been the holding of office or the preparing of their convictions for the receipt of more, to be philosophic; but it is not so easy for Massachusetts to be satisfied, when she sees only those of her children so rewarded who misrepresent her long-cherished principles, who oppose the spread of her institutions, who mock at her sense of right and her hereditary love of freedom, and are willing to accept place as an equivalent for the loss of her confidence. The question, Who is in office? may be of primary importance to Mr. Cushing, but is of little consequence to the Free States. What concerns them is, How and in what interest are the offices administered? If to the detriment of free institutions, then all the worse that sons of theirs can be found to do that part of the work which involves (as affairs are now tending) something very like personal dishonor. It is no matter of pride to us that the South has never been able to produce a sailor skilful enough and bold enough to take command of a slaver.
Mr. Cushing affects to see in the history of the Slavery Agitation nothing but a series of injuries inflicted by the North on the South. He charges "some of the Northern States" with acts of aggression upon the South "which would have been just cause of war as between foreign governments." He prudently forbears to name any. Does he mean, that persons have been found in some of those States unnational enough, un-Original-Democratic enough, to give a cup of water to a hunted Christian woman, or to harbor an outcast Christian man, without first submitting their hair to a microscopic examination? Does he mean, that we have said hard things of our Southern brethren? Grose's "Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" is open to them as well as to us, and the Richmond "South" is surely not in the habit of sprinkling the Northern subjects of its animadversion with rose-water. No,—what Mr. Cushing means is this,—that there are men at the North who will not surrender the principles they have inherited from three revolutions because they are threatened with a fourth that will never come,—who do not consider it an adequate success in our experiment of self-government that we can produce such types of nationality as reckon the value of their country by the amount of salary she pays,—who will not believe that there is no higher kind of patriotism than complicity in every violent measure of an administration which redeems only its pledges to a faction of Southern disunionists,—who will not admit that slave-holding is the only important branch of national industry, because the profession of that dogma enables unscrupulous men to enter the public service poor and to leave it rich. Has any citizen of a Southern State ever failed to obtain justice (that is to say, in the language of Original Democracy, his nigger) in a Northern court? Has Massachusetts ever mobbed an envoy or brutally assaulted a Senator of South Carolina? Has any Northern State ever nullified an article of the Federal Constitution, as every seaboard Slave-State has always done in respect
