that instrument upon which to base the notion that its framers intended the folly of combining* two antagonistic systems in the general government, or that when they declared its pur- pose 'to establish justice, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," they meant only people of white skins, any more than they meant to confine those great benefits to the descendants of the people then inhabiting the United States.
ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION IN THE OREGON TERRITORY.
During the years 1855, 1856, 1857, the people of the Oregon Territor,v were somewhat stirred by the pendency of the slavery question, which was supposed to have been settled for all time, so far as its existence here was concerned. It is not too much to say that the Oregon people were taken by surprise; that nothing of the kind ever entered the mind of one of them that even a. suggestion of slavery would be heard as applicable to this Northwest Coast. Then, why any agita- tion ; why any vote ? If humanity is on the up-grade, as optimists delight to believe, why should a professedly civilized people take a vote as to whether they will adopt in their Con- stitution the privilege of perpetual robbery^ That the Oregon people voted down such a proposition is no doubt to their credit, but casting an eye over the country as it was in the fall of the year 1857, and noting the schools, churches, and other evidences of peace and fraternity, is it not a most astounding fact that they were seriously considering such a question? But alas ! such are the contradictions in human nature that it must always be judged, not by comparison of it with what an enlightened human being knows and feels to be right, but in accordance with the controlling habit of the times. Though endowed with reason and conscience and affections that com- pel them to live in a social state, human beings are in the main selfish creatures of habit, and improve, if at all, step by step, and not by a far-reaching inquiry as to what is best for the whole. Neither are they, or their habits or doings, things of
