same reasoning, the same purposes, the same disregard of principles of society, which no people can ever set aside and not have reason to feel their situation insecure. It is false, it is the most dangerous mistake possible to assume that this feeling of insecurity, this annihilation of the only possible basis of security in human society, is, in the slightest degree, the result of modern agitation. It is the fundamental law of slavery, as distinctly appears in the decision of Justice Ruffin, of North Carolina, in the case of the State v. Mann.[1] The American system of slavery from its earliest years (as shown p. 496, "Seaboard Slave States"), and without cessation to the present time, has had this accompaniment. Less in the last twenty years, if anything, than before. Would it not be more just to say that this element of the present system was the cause of agitation? Must not the determined policy of the South to deal with slavery on the assumption that it is, in its present form, necessary, just, good, and to be extended, strengthened, and perpetuated indefinitely, involve constant agitation as a necessary incident of the means used to carry it out? I do not say with you or with me, reader, but with a goodly number of any civilized community? Do you not, who wish to think otherwise, consider that it will always require what you must deem a superior mind not to be overcome by incidents necessary to the carrying out of this determination? And will not such agitation give renewed sense of danger, and occasion renewed demands for assurance from us?
I have remarked before that in no single instance did I find an inquiry of the owner or the overseer of a large plantation about the poor whites of its vicinity fail to elicit an expression indicating habitual irritation with them. This equally with the polished and tranquil gentleman of South Carolina and the rude pioneer settler of Texas, himself born a
- ↑ 2 Devereaux's North Carolina Reports, 263.
