surdity of the Professors Michelet and Quinet in attempting to sustain an action against the Jesuits on their theory, and the grave errors in which the attempt involves them. They assume scarcely a position, let the conduct of the Jesuits be what it may, that is tenable. They have nothing solid of their own, no law or authority to urge against any body or any thing. They have theory, speculation, dithyrambics, hate, and prejudice ; but these are of no weight, and will never authorize an accusation. Before we can successfully condemn oth

. ers, we must have something certain of our own. This is a fact the enemies of the Church forget. They forget that they can no more condemn without law, than we can demand their submission without law; and that they cannot deny without reason, at random, any more than we can affirm without reason; because every denial is itself an affirmation. We have, therefore, wished to show that the Professors have no ground on which to attack the Jesuits ; for they have no ground on which to stand themselves. This we think we have done.

But in doing this we have not done all. We have thus far, if we may so speak, considered only the account which the Professors have given of themselves. There remains to be considered the account they give of the Jesuits. Thus far we have simply demurred to their declaration, and labored to show that they allege no offence, since they allege no law. But in condescension to what we presume to be their wish, we will waive the demurrer, and join issue with them on the facts in the case. We will endeavour to show that the Jesuits of their Lectures, so far as there can be pretended to be any thing exceptionable in their conduct, are mere entia rationis, or creatures of the imagination, and especially will we show that the charges against the Jesuits' system of education are either unfounded, or commendations. But we have no space to do this in our present paper, and must reserve it to a future occasion. The furious attacks made upon the Jesuits, the fear and consternation with which their very name strikes the enemies of God, and the distinguished services they have rendered the cause of truth, piety, science, art, and literature, render the subject interesting and important, and warrant us in devoting very considerable space to the discussion of the questions raised by Messrs. Michelet and Quinet. We are not afraid of drawing too largely upon the attention or patience of our readers; and it is well to let our unbelieving countrymen know something of the value of the oft-repeated accusations NEW SERIES.

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VOL. I. NO. III.

against an order which has done so much for Catholicity, and which has received so many and so signal tokens of the divine approbation and protection. We hope to be able to resume the subject in our next Review.

Art. III. - Speech of the Hon. R. B. Rhett, of South

Carolina, on the Oregon Territory Bill, excluding Slavery from that Territory, - the Missouri Compromise being pro

posed and rejected. Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, January 14, 1847. 8vo. pp. 14.

We always read Mr. Rhett's speeches with interest, and rarely without instruction. He ranks high among the most eminent of South Carolina's gifted sons, is high-minded and honorable, one of the few — alas ! very few — of our public men who act always from principle. He may sometimes be unsound in his views, but he always aims at truth and justice, and acknowledges that in politics, as in every thing else, a man should always act under a deep and abiding sense of moral obligation.

The speech before us is earnest, able, and eloquent, the production of the statesman and the constitutional lawyer. It is on a subject of great and almost fearful interest, which is every day forcing itself more and more directly upon the attention of the American people. It is confined, indeed, principally to the inquiry, Where vests the political sovereignty, under our system of government ? but it raises this inquiry only in its bearing on the great and absorbing question of Slavery. The question of slavery is becoming for us, through the influence of causes no longer controllable, the question of questions, which can henceforth be blinked with safety by no section of the Union, but which must be met and in some way disposed of, or it will dispose of the Union itself. How it is to be met and disposed of it is not easy to say, and not for us to attempt to say.

As conductor, some years since, of the Boston Quarterly Review, we took frequent occasion to express our views of the Abolitionists; and though many, many changes have come over us, and we can hardly be recognized by our readers as

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the same man that we were then, our estimation of them remains unaltered, except that, if possible, we now hold thein in still greater detestation. They are the worst enemies of their country, and the worst enemies, too, of the slave. They are a band of mad fanatics, and we have no language strong enough to express our abhorrence of their principles and proceedings. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that they have the sympathy of a large portion of the people of the Free States, and that in several of the Northern States they are already powerful enough to make it an object for demagogues to bid for their suffrages. Both political parties pander to them. Even the administration seems to court them ; for it has appointed from this Commonwealth scarcely an individual to a prominent office in its gift, not selected from the Abolition section of its friends, - certainly, no one distinguished for his bold and resolute opposition to Abolition movements. In the Whig party the tendency to Abolitionism, or to court the Abolitionists, is, perhaps, still more decided than in the Democratic party. In Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, the party, at least just before elections, is almost avowedly Abolitionist, and would be in this State, were it not for a few distinguished leaders, whose influence we are sorry to see daily declining. Young Whigdom in all the Free States, composed of young men and boys, not to say young misses, who are soon to be the Whig party itself, is virtually an Abolition party, and its leaders are nearly as far gone as Garrison, Phillips, Leavitt, and Abby Foster.

All the sects, if we except, perhaps, High Church Episcopalians, are either already carried away by the Abolition fanaticism, or rapidly yielding to it. The great body of Unitarian ministers in New England, once a respectable and conservative body of men, exerting, indeed, a bad influence on religion, yet highly commendable for political and social virtues, are almost to a man now mad and fanatical Socialists and Abolitionists. If some few yet hold out, they are timid, and without influence on the general action of the body of which they are members. Nearly all the young men from Protestant theological seminaries come out infected, and, wherever settled as ministers, seek to enlist their congregations in the movement. Only the Church, which can be surprised by no new moral or social question, which has nothing to learn from experience, and whose doctrines on all subjects are long ago determined and fixed, remains unaffected by the fanaticism around her, and pays no attention to the decisions of modern casuists.

Add to this the new aspect the question assumes through the anticipated extension of American territory by conquests from Mexico, and the bravest must admit that there is serious cause for alarm. The Slaveholding States contend that the territories of the United States not yet erected into States belong to all the States in common, and must be as open to their citizens to settle and occupy with their property, as to the citizens of the Free States ; and there is a very general determination on the part even of the most moderate of the citizens of the Free States to resist the further extension of the slave system. The majority of them will not seek to disturb it where it now legally exists, but they feel, that, for the sake of humanity and the honor of the American States, they ought resolutely to oppose all efforts to open new territory to it. If any new territory shall be acquired by the Union, a conflict is likely to come, whose shock may shiver the Union, and reduce it to its primitive elements.

For ourselves, we adopt no extreme views on the question of slavery. We have no sympathy with the Abolitionists ; we entertain not for a moment even one of their fundamental principles. Man, we are ready to maintain, may have property in man, a valid right to the services of his slave, — though no dominion over his soul ; slavery is not malum in se, and in no case justifiable ; there is nothing in slavery that necessarily prevents the slaveholder from being a true and pious Christian ; and where the master is a true Christian, and takes care that his people are instructed and brought up in the true Christian faith and worship, slavery is tolerable, and for negroes, perhaps, even more than tolerable. Many of the laws of the Slaveholding States on slavery are unnecessary, unjust, cruel, and disgraceful; a large body of the slaveholders are deeply censurable for neglecting to recognize and respect marriage among their people, and for bringing them up in heathenism or heresy ; but we have no sympathy with those who denounce them because they are slaveholders, and we have no reason to suppose that they cannot, in the moral, social, and religious virtues, compare favorably with their brethren of the North ; and, whatever repugnance we may feel, personally, to the slave system, we are fully convinced that the greatest disservice they could do to their slaves would be to grant them immediate emancipation ; which would be as cruel as for a father to turn his children out upon the world, at a tender age, to take care of themselves.

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But the great body of the people of the Free States are in principle opposed to the whole system of involuntary servitude. All their feelings and convictions are against it. They may not, the majority of them, as we have said, seek to disturb it where it now has a legal existence; but they shrink from its further extension within the bounds of the Union. They regard it as inconsistent with their professions of liberty and equality, and they feel acutely the hypocritical taunts of foreigners. They cannot endure the thought of consenting to pour out their blood and treasure to extend its area, and sooner than do so they are not unlikely to join in the enterprise to overthrow it where it is now established. If we have not mistaken the feeling in the Free States, the determination is fixed, even in the minds of the warmest and least hesitating friends of the South, that there shall be no further extension of the slave territory of the Union, and no more Slave States admitted into the Union. Whatever we may think of such a determination itself, we regard it as madness to deny its existence, and idle to attempt to withstand it.

But here arises a serious difficulty. The territories of the United States not yet erected into States belong to all the States in common, and must, in justice, be open alike to the citizens of each, who may wish to occupy them. Congress can make no discrimination between the States, in prescribing the conditions on which the territories may be settled and occupied. If the citizens of Non-slaveholding States are left free to settle and occupy them with their property, the citizens of the Slaveholding States must also be left free to settle and occupy them with theirs. The fact, that the latter recognize property in slaves, while the former do not, cannot be iaken into the account. Congress has no authority to define property, to say what shall or shall not be property, but is bound to respect as property, for the citizens of each State, what their State defines to be property. One State cannot define it for another; for, in relation to the others, each State is an independent sovereign, and its definition of property within its own limits must be respected by all the others, as well as by the Union. Hence, in the territories which belong to no State in particular, but of which all are tenants in common, no State can have any right to make its system of property prevail over that of any of the others; and Congress, being bound to respect the system of each for the citizens of each, cannot prefer the system of one to the exclusion of the system of another.

Then Congress