And now, fellow-citizens, do these men, with all their profanity and vulgarity, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, represent the feelings, and manners, and morals of the slaveholding community? We have seen no evidence that they have lost a particle of popular favor in consequence of their ferocious violence. Alas! their language has been re-echoed again and again by public meetings in the slave States; and we proceed to lay before you overwhelming proof that in the expression of their murderous feelings towards the abolitionists, they have faithfully represented the sentiments of their constituents. VII. DISREGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE. We have already seen that one of the blessings which the slaveholders attribute to their favorite institution, is exemption from popular tumults, and from encroachments by the democracy upon the rights of property. Their argument is, that political power in the hands of the poor and laboring classes is always attended with danger, and that this danger is averted when these classes are kept in bondage. With these gentlemen, life and liberty seem to be accounted as the small dust of the balance, when weighed against slavery and plantations; hence, to preserve the latter they are ever ready to sacrifice the former, in utter defiance of laws and constitutions. We have already noticed the murderous proposition in relation to abolitionists, made by Governor M'Duffie to the South Carolina Legislature in 1835: "It is my deliberate opinion that the _laws_ of every community should punish this species of interference, by DEATH without benefit of clergy." In an address to a legislative assembly, Governor M'Duffie refrained from the indecency of recommending _illegal_ murder; but we will soon find that the public sentiment of the South by no means requires that abolitionists shall be put to death with legal formalities; but on the contrary, the slaveholders are ready, in the language of Mr. Payne, to "hang them like dogs." We hazard little in the assertion, that in no civilized Christian community on earth is human life less protected by law, or more frequently taken with impunity, than in the slave States of the Federal Union. We wish to impress upon you the danger and corruption to which you and your children are exposed from the institution, which, as we have shown you, exists by your sufferance. But you have been taught to respect this institution; and hence it becomes necessary to enter into details, however painful, and to present you with authorities which you cannot reject. What we have just said of the insecurity of human life, will probably be deemed by you and others as abolition slander. Listen, then, to slaveholders themselves.