question is to answer it. The government is instituted to protect, not
to destroy property. In abundance of caution, your fathers provided
that the federal government should not take private property, even for
its own use, unless by making due compensation therefore. One of its
great purposes was to increase the security of property, and by a more
perfect union of forces, to render more effective protection to the
States. When that power for protection becomes a source of danger, the
purpose for which the government was formed will have been defeated,
and the government can no longer answer the ends for which it was
established.

Why, then, in the absence of all control over the subject of African
slavery, are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaical
pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate,
and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance
for other men's sins. [Laughter.] Who gave them a right to decide that
it is a sin? By what standard do they measure it? Not the
Constitution; the Constitution recognizes the property in many forms,
and imposes obligations in connection with that recognition. Not the
Bible; that justifies it. Not the good of society; for if they go
where it exists, they find that society recognizes it as good. What,
then, is their standard? The good of mankind? Is that seen in the
diminished resources of the country? Is that seen in the diminished
comfort of the world? Or is not the reverse exhibited? Is it in the
cause of Christianity? It cannot be, for servitude is the only agency
through which Christianity has reached that degraded race, the only
means by which they have been civilized and elevated. Or is their
charity manifested in denunciation of their brethren who are
restrained from answering by the contempt which they feel for a mere
brawler, whose weapons are empty words? [Applause.]