rich, hoarding millions in senseless idolatry, or indulging in the
luxuries of birds'-nests and roasted ice. Massed together, they must
migrate. Where can they go? They must come to our shores. They must come,
even did God forbid them. But he will hasten their coming. They can live
in the extremest South. It is their latitude,--their side of the ocean.
They can cultivate cotton, rice, sugar, tea, and the silkworm. Their
skill, their manipulation, is unrivalled. Their commonest gong you can
neither make nor explain. They are a law-abiding people, without castes,
accustomed to rise by merit to highest distinctions, and capable of the
noblest training, when their idolatry, which is waxing old as a garment,
shall be folded up as a vesture and changed for _that_ whose years shall
not fail. The English ambassador assures us that the Chinese negotiator of
the late treaty was a splendid gentleman, and a diplomatist to move in any
court of Europe. Shem, then, can mingle with Japheth in America.

The Chinese must come. God will bring them. He will fulfil Benton's noble
thought. The railroad must complete the voyage of Columbus. The statue of
the Genoese, on some peak of the Rocky Mountains, high above the flying
cars, must point to the West, saying, "There is the East! There is India
and Cathay."

Let us, then, North and South, bring our minds to comprehend _two ideas_,
and submit to their irresistible power. Let the Northern philanthropist
learn from the Bible that the relation of master and slave is not sin
_per se_. Let him learn that God nowhere says it is sin. Let him learn
that sin is the transgression of the law; and where there is no law,
there is no sin; and that _the golden rule_ may exist in the relations of
slavery. Let him learn that slavery is simply an evil _in certain
circumstances_. Let him learn that _equality_ is only the highest form of
social life; that _subjection_ to authority, even _slavery_, may, in