let

every

method when it comes to that; but let all good men, patriot, set to work to correct the public sentiment of the North, and if possible save the country from the terrible infliction. The public feeling of the South has been wrought upon and irritated, until it has arrived, in a good degree, at a point of desperation.

The South cares little about the mere election of Mr. Lincoln; they view it as the development of a public sentiment, as a last and final sentiment of the free States. They look at us as States, not as individual members of the community, as we look at them, as States, not as individual members of society. They regard this as an evidence of public opinion which has passed beyond their control, and they say now there is no hope for them within the Union as equals, and they will secede. What we should convince them of is, that we will not only repeal our obnoxious laws upon paper, but that we will repeal the prevailing public sentiment that is more pernicious than all the obnoxious laws of New England and all the free States together. It is a sentiment that has been infused by political demagogues who have gone through the land, preaching demagogueism and sectionalism on the subject of slavery; and whether in the character of a political demagogue or a ministerial one I care very little.

Our Southern brothers will reason with us when we reason with them. No amount of finished and eloquent addresses will serve in this emergency; no finely turned periods in speech; no resolutions, however patriotic and well pointed and considered, will answer the occasion. No commission of individuals, however elevated, patriotic, and pure of record, will be of the least avail, unless the Southern people are satisfied that they represent the public sentiment. When the belief of the South can rest on the sincerity of our resolutions, addresses, and speeches, as representing the public mind of the North, and not till then, will come concord and unity. I have little faith in anything except that which goes towards creating or developing at home a pure, patriotic, elevated public sentiment. I have little faith in a meeting in this great commercial city, or anything it can do, further than as giving evidence of a public sentiment. The South are sure of the fidelity of the city of New York. It has been true at all times; it has never swerved

with its great and patriotic majority. But the South have seen that the vote of the country is overwhelming, and renders the city powerless; so far as it is an evidence of the public sentiment of the State and city, it will have its influence, and no further. But we should go further; we should repeal the obnoxious laws on our statute book, and the repeal should carry evidence that it is not for any mere temporary purpose; that it is not because our pecuniary interests have been touched; but it must carry evidence that it is a reflection of the returning public sense; that those who would not see have been made to feel, and that the returning sense and reason are real and will be permanent. The free States must be wrought up to the consideration of a great public duty.

The South have not offended us. We cannot say that they have ever laid a finger upon us. They have not invaded our domain. They have not interfered with any interests belonging to us as sovereign States. But they read in our newspapers that their slaves have been run off in numbers by an underground railroad, and they see it set down in derision that one more Southern individual has been robbed of his property; one more slave, instead of having been returned according to the compact of the constitution, has been run off into the provinces of Canada, and insult and injury returned for a constitutional duty. They have determined to bear these things no longer; and it becomes the Northern people to determine whether they will permit this state of things to go on, or whether they will make one last grand effort to see whether this false sentiment and these evil practices can be corrected. You cannot send forth a stream by any natural process higher than the fountain. The South know it. They have no faith in addresses and resolutions that have not their sources in the feelings of the masses of the people.

It is useless to say there is no serious trouble. I believe that South Carolina will secede, so far as the movement of her convention can do it, on the 17th or 18th of this month, and events must transpire shortly after which will bring all the cotton States in association with her; and eventually every State, which is a slave State and intends to continue such, will go along together, unless the danger can be arrested. This is as certain as the law of gravity, and he is a blind man and madman who

cannot see it. All that we can now do is to get time to convince the Southern people that there is a returning sentiment of fidelity and justice in the Northern States; that the honest masses have been misled, and have misunderstood this irritating question, as I believe they have, and upon proper consideration will go back to their duty as members of this confederacy, and will welcome back our Southern brethren to the great family of political, social, and moral equals. Our constitution and federal laws, I repeat, are well enough. Our obnoxious State laws should be repealed, and in their place a public sentiment should be set up and borne aloft, as the great lawgiver of olden times the brazen serpent, that every one who has been bitten by Abolitionism may look on it and be healed.

set up

I will close as I began. I did not intend to take part in this meeting. I have no particular views but what I have often repeated; and my hope is, that by this respectable meeting a public sentiment may be inaugurated; and if it be as just, conservative, and beneficial, as I believe it to be, we may then properly so represent it to our Southern brethren, and no longer be misunderstood. We must look the danger fully and squarely in the face. We must not put too much trust in meetings, in Congress, or in legislation; but if we would remain an united people, we must treat the Southern States as we treated them on the inauguration of the government-as political equals. When we have done that, we shall have done our whole duty; and perhaps this glorious government may still be maintained and go forward to the fruition that should await it.

ADDRESS

ON TEMPERANCE; THE POLICY OF LICENSE LAWS, &C.

DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING AT ALBANY, February 8, 1843.

FEW subjects, in modern times, have commanded a greater share of public consideration than that of temperance. Its benign influences have been inculcated by philanthropists throughout the civilized world. The press has lent its giant power to disseminate its blessings, and the ministers of religion have mingled its precepts with the glad tidings of the gospel, in proclaiming peace on earth and good will to men.

In contrast, the evils of intemperance have been most vividly portrayed. The choicest figures of rhetoric and liveliest images of poetry have been invoked, and the pencil's mimic power has, with startling fidelity, thrown back from the canvas its hideous and loathsome deformity. But the painful and humiliating reality has not been shown, for in the history of intemperance, as in that of romance, "truth is stranger than fiction." It has been so often established, that the misery, pauperism, and crime, which burden and infest society are caused by intemperance, that to repeat it would be worse than gratuitous.

The salutary truth, that the effect produced upon the human system by stimulating drinks is highly deleterious, and that the physical and moral man is thereby degraded, is most generally conceded by all rational and reflecting men; and yet there are some strongholds of this scourge of the human race which have not surrendered. These are the dram-shops authorized by our excise system, and wine-drinking by the wealthy and influential.

The history of the last few years, marked as it has been by recklessness and profligacy-by a disregard of the sober pursuits of industry, and an apparent determination to reverse the divine declaration, that man should eat his bread by the sweat of his face-exhibits a period inauspicious for the cause of this salutary reformation. The fortunes, fancied and real, which have been wrecked; the unparalleled fluctuations in trade, and every department of business, by which thousands have been plunged from affluence to poverty, and goaded to madness and desperation, have driven many to drown their sorrows in the inebriating cup, though filled with greater bitterness and griefs more poignant than those which they would steep in the drowsy waters of forgetfulness. But this wild and fearful dream has passed away, leaving behind it traces of bleak and withering desolation; and the friends of temperance may well rejoice that their benevolent enterprise has outrode the storm unscathed, and apply themselves with renewed vigor to the completion of their work.

The excise system, which, in part, served as a precedent for our present excise law, was originally a mere inland duty or imposition charged upon general consumption, or retail sale, and was designed for purposes of revenue alone. It was adopted first among the Romans, by Augustus, after the civil wars, and continued by Tiberias and others in a modified form; and although it was suggested as the financial policy of Charles the First, by the treasurer of that monarch, who was the father of the system in England, it was not finally introduced there and acted upon until 1643, when it was adopted by the long parliament, after its rupture with the

crown.

It was laid upon articles where it was supposed its hardships would be the least perceivable; and it was remarked by its founder in that country, in a spirit of short-sighted craftiness becoming a mere politician, that it must be so managed that the people would become accustomed to its exactions gradually.

The difficulties consequent upon levying and collecting the excise upon ale and liquors sold in ale-houses and dram-shops, by small measure, induced the system of licensing inns and alehouses, and the paying of the excise in a gross sum, and subsequently to regulating them by law, and compelling them to