trations for our domestic concerns, the surest bulwark against anti-republican tendencies;" and it is rapidly centralizing all our political institutions. (4) Congress is systematically breaking down all the divisions of power between the coördinate departments of the Federal Government which the Constitution established, and which have always been considered as essential to the very existence of constitutional representative government. The conviction of all our revered statesmen and patriots is, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, that "the concentration of legislative, executive, and judicial powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government."' "An elective despotism," said he, "was not the government we fought for, but one that should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of the government should be so divided among several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others." Hitherto the great right of the citizen to a voice in choosing his rulers has been safely intrenched in the constitutions of the several states. No legislative power in the land, federal or state, could touch it. No temporary political ascendency, no fluctuation of parties, could endanger it. The state constitution could be changed only through slow processes-imposing delays insuring deliberation, and generally requiring several submissions to a vote of the people. To effect a change throughout the Union would require that these processes be carried through in each state separately. But once abdicate this rightful authority of the people of the several states, acting in their organic capacity; once allow Congress to usurp jurisdiction over the suffrage of the people of the states; once admit that this fundamental right may be changed by a mere enactment of Congress, without submission to a vote of the people-and no man in any state can tell how soon his vote may be rendered worthless, or how soon it may be taken from him. Mr. Sumner avows that his object is to control the next Presidential election. Adopt his theory; establish the precedent; accustom the people to acquiesce in the usurpation; and you will have a congressional majority changing the suffrage wherever it may be a convenient means of keeping them selves in power. An ambitious President, with a subservient majority in Congress; in possession of the machinery of the Federal Government; our political system centralized under the popular reaction against the heresy of secession, until the moral force of the states to restrain is gone-and a supreme control over the suffrage is all that is wanting to complete and consummate a practical revolution in our gov. ernment. Your future masters may indulge you a while in the forms of election, if they be allowed to make over the constituent bodies as often and as much as they please, letting in and shutting out voters to maintain their ascendency. An addition of nine hundred and thirty one thousand negroes-most of them emancipated slaves without any of the training, or traditions, or aspirations of freemen, who would as soon vote to make their favorite an emperor as to make him a president-will be a convenient accessory. And when their representatives get into power, who can doubt that they are capable of being made facile instruments of excluding opponents as well as of admitting allies? How do you think Senator Brownlow and his twenty associates would vote on a bill to regulate the suffrage by admitting negroes in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois? How would they vote on a bill to regulate the suffrage by excluding Irishmen or Germans? Do you think they would not assert the superior rights of the negroes born in this country over foreigners? Is it not at least prudent for all who possess the suffrage to keep the regulation of it where it now is-in the constitutions of the several states? The Republicans have educated our people to overthrow what they called the "Slave power." Analyze it. What was it? It was the influence which 350,000 heads of families, embracing 2,000,000 of the white race, owning slaves, and living intermingled with 6,000,000 of other whites not owning slaves, were capable of exercising over public opinion, thereby upon the government. It gave us Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Marshall, Clay, and hosts of other statesmen and patriots; and whatever influence could be exercised by it was only through the consent of millions of civilized people of our race. The struggle to overthrow it has cost the whole country a mil lion of lives and four thousand millions of dollars. And now what is it proposed to the people of the great populous commonwealths of the North to accept in exchange, and as the recompense for such immense sacrifices? The political power of the states where slavery once existed will remain, and after the next census will be enlarged by the representation of all, instead of three-fifths of the former slaves. That power in the ten States, if the system of the Republicans shall prevail and continue-at any rate for the next few years, which involve practically all the business interests of the country-is to be wielded by a few hundred adventurers through the 3,000,000 emancipated slaves; and the centralization of our governmental authorities will cause it to act vastly more upon all our interests. It will give us Hunnicut for Washington, Underwood for Jefferson, and Brownlow for Jackson. Every element of this power would be inferior in morality and intelligence to the one which has been overthrown, and its influence upon our welfare would be immensely greater. Will the people of our great Northern States accept a domination of such a "negro power," erected on the ruins of such a "slave power?" I do not ask what will be the consequences on the white race of ten states-whether the white race will be expelled; I do not ask what will be the effects upon our industrial or commercial interests, or on the civilization of a portion of our country three and a half times as large as the French Empire. If the authors of this policy tell you that the white people of the South deserve this infliction, I ask you whether you all deserve it? If, taking counsel of hatred, you think you are making a government for your late enemies, I remind you that you are also making a government for yourselves. Do the 25,000,000 of white people out of the ten states deserve such a government as you are imposing on them? The masses of the Republicans do not understand the real nature of the system they are contributing to establish. They are misled by party association and party antagonism, by the animosities created by war, and the unsettled ideas which grow out of the novelty of the situation. The leaders are full of party passion and party ambition, and will not easily surrender the power of a centralized government, or the patronage and profits which are incident to an official expenditure of $500,000,000 a year. The grim Puritan of New England-whose only child, whose solitary daughter is already listening to the soft music of a Celtic wooerstretches his hand down along the Atlantic coast to the receding and decaying African, and says: "Come, let us rule this continent together!" The twelve senators from New England, with twenty from the ten states, would require only a few from Missouri, Tennessee, West Virginia, and from new states, to make a majority. I do not forbid the banns; I simply point to the region which stretches from the Hudson to the Missouri. It is there that the Democracy must display their standards in another, and, I trust, final battle for constitutional government and civil liberty. I invited you to that theater last year; I come now to bid you God-speed! Every business, every industrial interest is paralyzed under excessive taxation, false systems of finance, extravagant cost of production, diminished ability to consume. You cannot obtain relief until you change your governmental policy. You cannot change that until you change the men who administer your government. The causes of the dangers in respect to our political institutions and civil liberty and the causes of your suffering in business are identical. For the safety of the one and for the relief of the other you must demand of the people a change of administration as now carried on by Congress. ROBERT TOOMBS REVOLUTION OR SECESSION [Robert Toombs was born in Georgia in 1810. He was elected to the lower House in Congress in 1845, and to the United States Senate in 1853, and was reëlected to the latter in 1859. Being a leader of the secession party in Georgia, he resigned his seat in the Senate when that State left the Union, and became secretary of state for the Southern Confederacy, in which capacity he served from February 1861 to July of the same year. In 1862 he was elected a senator in the Confederate Senate, and became a brigadier-general in the same year. He died at Washington in 1885. The following was his last speech in the United States Senate previous to his retirement therefrom shortly before the Civil War began, and was delivered January 7, 1861.] THE HE success of the Abolitionists and their allies, under the name of the Republican party, has produced its logical results already. They have for long years been sowing dragons' teeth, and have finally got a crop of armed men. The Union, sir, is dissolved. That is an accomplished fact in the path of this discussion that men may as well heed. One of your confederates has already, wisely, bravely, boldly, confronted public danger, and she is only ahead of many of her sisters because of her greater facility for speedy action. The greater majority of those sister states, under like circumstances, consider her cause as their cause; and I charge you in their name to-day, "Touch not Saguntum." It is not only their cause, but it is a cause which receives the sympathy and will receive the support of tens and hundreds of thousands of honest patriotic men in the non-slaveholding states, who have hitherto maintained constitutional rights, and who respect their oaths, abide by compacts, and love justice. And while this Congress, this Senate, and this House of Representatives, are debating the constitutionality and the expediency of seceding from the Union, and while the perfidious authors of this mischief |