he declared that he ranked Wilberforce. Mark now the end. After years of weary effort, the slave-trade was finally abolished; and at last, in 1833, the early vindicator of even this enormity, the maligner of a name hallowed among men, was brought to give his royal assent, as William IV., king of Great Britain, to the immortal act of Parliament, greater far than any victory of war, by which slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions. Sir, time and the universal conscience have vindicated the labors of Wilberforce. The movement against American Slavery, auspicated by the august names of Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, can calmly await a similar judgment.
But it is suggested that, in this movement, there is danger to the Union. In this solicitude I cannot share. As a lover of concord and a jealous partisan of all things that make for peace, I am always glad to express my attachment to the Union; but I believe that this bond will be most truly preserved and most beneficently extended (for I shrink from no expansion where freedom leads the way) by firmly upholding those principles of liberty and justice which were made its early corner-stones. The true danger to this Union proceeds, not from any abandonment of the "peculiar institution" of the South, but from the abandonment of the spirit in which the Union was formed; not from any warfare, within the limits of the Constitution, upon slavery; but from warfare, like that waged by this very bill,
