immediate contact and personal relation greater care and kindness
would be engendered. In every way it would conduce to the advancement
and happiness of the servile caste.

No--no--it is not these, but the same answer which comes to every
inquiry as to the cause of fanatical agitation. 'Tis for sectional
power, and political ascendency; to fan a sectional hostility, which
must be, as it has been, injurious to all, and beneficial to none. For
what patriotic purpose can the Northern mind be agitated in relation
to domestic institutions, for which they have no legal or moral
responsibility, and from the interference with which they are
restrained by their obligations as American citizens?

Is it in this mode that the spirit of mutual support and common effort
for the common good, is to be cultivated? Is it thus that confidence
is to be developed and the sense of security to grow with the growing
power of each and every State? Is it thus that we are to exemplify the
blessings of self-government by the free exercise in each independent
community of the power to regulate their domestic institutions as
soil, climate, and population may determine?

Among the questions which have been made the basis of recent
agitation, and has contributed as much, perhaps, as any other to
popular delusion, was the act known as the Missouri Compromise. It
will be remembered that the agitation of 1819 on the subject of
slavery, was not masked as it has been since, by pretensions of
philanthropy--it was an avowed opposition to the admission of a
slave-holding State. A long and bitter controversy was terminated by
the admission of the State of Missouri, and the prohibition of slavery
north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30 minutes. He, and those with whom