The farewell advice of Washington operated like a spell upon the hearts and consciences of his countrymen. For many, many years after his death, it would almost have been deemed blasphemy to speak of separation as a possible event. I would that it still continued so! But it is now an every-day occurrence, to hear politicians, of all parties, conjecturing what system would be pursued by different sections of the country, in case of a dissolution of the Union. This evil is likewise chargeable upon slavery. The threats of separation have _uniformly_ come from the slaveholding States; and on many important measures the free States have been awed into acquiescence by their respect for the Union. Mr. Adams, in the able and manly report before alluded to, says: "It cannot be denied that in a community spreading over a large extent of territory, and politically founded upon the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, but differing so widely in the elements of their social condition, that the inhabitants of one-half the territory are wholly free, and those of the other half divided into masters and slaves, deep if not irreconcilable collisions of interest must abound. The question whether such a community can exist under one common government, is a subject of profound, philosophical speculation in theory. Whether it can continue long to exist, is a question to be solved only by the experiment now making by the people of this Union, under that national compact, the constitution of the United States." The admission of Missouri into the Union is another clear illustration of the slaveholding power. That contest was marked by the same violence, and the same threats, as have characterized nullification. On both occasions the planters were pitted against the commercial and manufacturing sections of the country. On both occasions the democracy of the North was, by one means or another, induced to throw its strength upon the Southern _lever_, to increase its already prodigious power. On both, and on all occasions, some little support has been given to Northern principles in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina; because in portions of those States there is a considerable commercial interest, and some encouragement of free labor. So true it is, in the minutest details, that slavery and freedom are always arrayed in opposition to each other. At the time of the Missouri question, the pestiferous effects of slavery had become too obvious to escape the observation of the most superficial statesman. The new free States admitted into the Union enjoyed tenfold prosperity compared with the new slave States. Give a free laborer a barren rock, and he will soon cover it with vegetation; while the slave and his task-master, would change the garden of Eden to a desert.