a foreign locality. Hence all our courts hold that a slave brought by his owner into a Free State ceases to be a slave, and he would be free the moment his master carried him across the frontier even into another Slave State, if the positive law of this latter State did not renew and confirm the master's right. The principle on which our courts proceed is, that every man is born free, and can be deprived of his natural freedom only by a positive local law. Every man is in presumption of law a freeman, and no one can be treated otherwise than as a freeman, except where a local law making him a slave can be pleaded. The slave carried by his master, or were it not for the constitutional provision with regard to Fugitive slaves, escaping from that locality into another where no such local positive law can be pleaded, resumes his natural freedom, and reenters the class of freemen. Nature knows no slaves. By the law of nature all men are born free and equal, and man has no jus dominii in man. The Common Law, in so far as it does not consist of local customs and usages, is coincident with the law of nature or natural right, and customs and usages have the force of law, only in their particular locality. There is no American law common to the whole Union that authorizes slavery in the absence of the statute law prohibiting it, because such law could proceed only from some act of the States forming the Union, and no such act can be pretended. The argument based on the obligation of Congress to protect the right of property, which we used in 1847, in our article on Slavery and the Mexican War, is rendered invalid by the decision of the Supreme Court, of which we were then ignorant, that slavery exists only by virtue of local law. Therefore the right of property held by the master in his slave is a local right, and has no existence out of that locality. If we understand the decision, the Federal Courts can recognize the right of the master only in cases that come under the lex loci. Hence the courts of law in Kanzas, were a suit brought involving the point, would be obliged, we doubt not, to declare the alleged slave a free man, whatever may have been the action of the people or the Territorial Legislature. We deny that slavery does or can legally exist in Kanzas, so long as Kanzas remains a Territory under the United States.

The great objection to the Kanzas-Nebraska Bill is to the clause authorizing the people of the Territory to decide whether they will allow slavery or not. We deny the power of Congress to authorize them to do so. In so far as the Bill touches slavery, it provides for its possible introduction into territory where it can not go legally or constitutionally. It was an attempt to impose upon the Democracy, by confounding the people as a Territory with the people as a State, although by no means the first attempt of the kind. It hoped, because the people as a State are sovereign, to have it pass without opposition that they are sovereign as a Territory, or have as a Territory inherent and underived legislative authority,—an absurdity equalled only by the so-called Missouri Compromise, which we are glad to see struck from our statute books. We reject with indignation this abominable doctrine of "squatter sovereignty," and oppose the KanzasNebraska policy still more for its recognition of this doctrine than for any advantage it is likely to secure to the slave interest. Yet, as a recognition of it in favor of that interest, it is also objectionable.

Our readers know that we are no abolitionists, and no one can suspect us of any sympathy with them. We say distinctly that we are strongly opposed to all efforts made in the non-slaveholding States to abolish slavery where it now legally exists. We have no right or wish to interfere with it in a single Slave State. It is, in those States, an affair of their own, and to their disposition of it we feel ourselves bound to leave it. We always have defended, and always shall scrupulously defend, to the best of our feeble abilities, all the constitutional rights of slaveholders as well as of non-slaveholders; we will not interfere with the free development and expansion of slavery within its legal limits; but we are not and never have been the champion of slavery; we have never been and never expect to be captivated by its beauties; and, in common with the great body of the people of the Free States, we are personally opposed to its extension beyond the limits of the States in which it now legally exists, and we cannot condemn those who believe themselves bound to use all their constitutional rights to resist its further extension. We will scrupulously respect all the rights of the Slave States, but we

expect them to respect equally all the rights of the Free States, and we are unable to see why it is not as honorable and as chivalric to labor to extend the area of freedom as it is to labor to extend the area of slavery. If we are opposed to the subjection of the South by the North, we are equally opposed to the subjection of the North by the South. We deem it the part of all wise American statesmanship to resist by all constitutional and honorable means, the building up in any section of the Union of a great consolidated sectional interest, able to control and subject all others. The slave interest is as legitimate as the banking or the mercantile interest, but it is every where one and identical, and is already the most powerful interest in the country, and if it comes into Federal politics, it is able, through the division of other interests, to control the policy of the General Government. As far as this interest is legitimate, and is wielded in a constitutional way, we have nothing to allege against it; but as a citizen, looking to the welfare of the whole Union, we may well be opposed to its growth and expansion beyond its legal limits; we may well be disposed to use all our constitutional rights to restrict it and to keep it out of the arena of politics, and on the same principle, and for nearly the same reasons that General Jackson was opposed the old United States Bank.

We enter here into no inquiry as to the party that first brought slavery into Federal politics. Very likely the North in this respect is the principal offender. But whoever was the first aggressor, the question has now to be met on its merits, as at present before the public, and treated in reference to its bearing on the future peace and integrity of the Union. There is a party at the North, resolved at all hazards to effect the complete abolition of slavery,-a party that may become strong, but which as yet is comparatively weak. There is also a party at the South, or a so-called Southern party, that avails itself of the aggressions of the North as a plea for extending and consolidating the slave interest. Its members are called disunionists, and perhaps do now and then threaten secession; but their real policy, as we regard it, is not disunion, but, through the slave interest, supremacy. It enters into their calculation by filibustering or other means to annex Cuba, all

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Southern Mexico, and Central America, as Slave States, and they are taking their measures to force the North to aid them, apparently to take the lead, in doing it. Cuba is to be annexed to prevent it from becoming a free colony, and also to add another Slave State to the Union. If the Spanish laws and edicts on slavery were executed in Cuba there would remain very few slaves in that island. I am told that by far the larger part of the black population of the island are legally entitled to their freedom, and that the reason why the Cuban Creoles wish to be annexed to the Union, is the fear that the mother country, the moment she gets matters settled at home, may take it into her head to see that her laws and edicts in favor of freedom are enforced, and thus deprive them of their slaves. This is the Spanish tyranny of which we hear so much. It is pretty certain that slavery will not much longer exist in Cuba, if it remains a colony of Spain. Hence the desire of the Cuban slaveholders to be annexed to the Union; and to avoid another example of emancipation in their immediate neighborhood is one strong reason why the people of the South-Western States entertain the same desire. Re-open the slave trade, annex Cuba, Mexico, and Central America, these last after having been first organized into a Southern Republic by Walker or some other equally worthy adventurer, apparently hostile to the United States, so as not to excite the opposition of France and England, and the slave interest will have so extended and consolidated itself that it can not only defy, as it is trusted, the attacks of Northern abolitionism, but also dictate as a master the policy of the Federal Administration. we take it, is what the so-called Southern party, really not more Southern than Northern in its composition, is pursuing. It is, also, a policy not absolutely impracticable, if its abettors can, by alarming the friends of the Union as to the danger of Northern sectionalism, prevent the sound portion of the people from interposing in time to thwart it. Northern speculation has a hand in it, and its most efficient supporters we presume are to be found in this city. The Cincinnati Platform, with its endorsement of the Kanzas-Nebraska Bill, the strong emphasis placed on the so-called "Monroe doctrine," and the recent movement towards the revival of slavery by Walker in Nicaragua,

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are all significant, and indicate pretty plainly what is intended and what is expected.

We do not pretend that this policy finds its support only at the South, or that there are not Northern demagogues and speculators in abundance leagued with the Southern; nor do we pretend that the South is unanimously in favor of it. The mass of the people both South and North are really and firmly attached to the Union, and ask nothing more than to have the government administered in accordance with Union principles, leaving all sectional interests to be disposed of by the several State governments.. But the advocates of the policy we have under consideration are laboring through the slave interest to combine the whole Southern people in its favor, by making them generally believe that their only security for their slave property is in its realization. The leaders of the party are, perhaps, Northern, rather than Southern men, and the whole scheme looks to us like the product of a Northern, rather than a Southern brain. It smells of Wall street. These leaders care no more for one section of the Union than another, and their aim is simply to use the South through the slave interest to further the purposes of their own selfish ambition and personal aggrandizement. They wish to build up a single permanent interest strong enough to dictate the policy of the government, and the slave interest is the one which seems to them to have the requisite capabilities. By combining slavery with democracy, and democracy with the extension of territory and therefore with the interest of the speculators, they hope to succeed in their plans.

The danger in this case, as in most others, comes from creating false issues. The party we oppose labor at the South to confound the security of slave property, where it is legally recognized, and which is all that the great body of the Southern people ask, with slavery extension, or the enlargement of the area of slavery; while at the North they labor to confound opposition to the extension of slavery into new territory, with abolitionism, or a determination to interfere with slavery in the Slave States themselves. They will not suffer either at the South or at the North the proper issue to be made before the public. Hence the danger. The first thing for Mr. Buchanan