Slavery Question in Oregon. 331 deeper insight reveals that the fact that he is not an origi- nator but a product of pre-existing forces, a matrix containing impressions of all before ; that if we regard him as an agent, ■ve must think of him as being under duress of antecedent qualities gifted with predilections that, to a great exen+, shape his course through life, and that his conduct is as much in accordance with natural law as the flow of a river which, though it may not be arrested, may be diverted in its course, by dikes and headlands. Nothing is free in this world. There is no such possibility in nature as irrelevance in its incidents. Everj^ occurrence is both cause and effect ; a vibrating link in the chain of causation. So, will, instead of being free and disconnected, is an effect, a resultant of certain mental states and varies with them; and the mental states depend upon inherited endowments and the environing conditions. Every person capable of thinking recognizes such a causative series as being true and to talk otherwise is the direct nonsense. The propensities, passions, affections, moral sentiments, all of them blind, acting hastily and impulsively, without the well prepared guidance of the intellectual faculties, terminate in thoughtless conduct; and very much of human conduct is hasty and ill-considered or the consequence of false notions accepted as truth. But whatever may be the character of the action, the will is only a blind medium of transmuting or transmitting the mental impulse or conclusion into conduct. Under this aspect of man and his attributes, what becomes of the old ideas of individual responsibility and penal infliction.^? as an offset for transgression ? It must pass away and cease to perplex the cogitations of lawmakers. The rational func- tion of legislators is to remove the causes of transgressions and, if punishment is not applicable as a deterrent, it is executed through ignorance or prompted by malevolence. For- why inflict pain upon any human being for an action which, under the existing conditions, was inevitable? The foregoing dissertation is not indulged for the reason that its principles are new to philosophy or foreign to legisla- tion, but because their practical application is very limited
