Standing on the bent necks of an enslaved race, with four millions of human beings as the black marble Caryatides to support its power, the Slave Oligarchy erects itself into a lordly caste which brooks no opposition. But when I speak of Caste, I mean nothing truly polite; and when I speak of Oligarchy, I mean nothing truly aristocratic. As despotism is simply an abuse of monarchy, so Oligarchy is simply an abuse of aristocracy, unless it be that most vulgar of all, “aristocracy of the skin.” Derived from Slavery, and having the interests of Slavery always in mind, our Oligarchy must naturally take its character from this _five-headed_ wrong. “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.” All that is bad in Slavery, its audacity, its immorality, its cruelty, its robbery, its meanness, its ignorance, its barbarous disregard of human rights, and its barbarous disregard of every obligation, must all be reproduced in its representative. If the Oligarchy hesitates at nothing to serve its selfish ends, it simply acts in harmony with Slavery, from which it draws its life-blood. If in grasp of power it is like the hunchback Richard, if in falsehood it copies Iago, and if in character it is low as the brutish Caliban, “Which any print of goodness will not take, Being capable of all ill,”-- ay, if in all these respects it surpasses its various prototypes,--if in steady baseness, in uniform brutality, and consummate wickedness it is without a peer, be not astonished, fellow-citizens, for it acts simply according to the original law of its birth and the inborn necessities of its being. With all these unprecedented qualities and aptitudes combined into one intense activity, it goes where it will and does what it pleases. The Pterodactyl of an early geological period, formed for all service and every element, with neck of bird, mouth of reptile, wing of bat, body of mammifer, and with hugest eye, so that it could seek its prey in the night,--such was the ancient and extinct kindred of this Oligarchy, which, like Milton’s fiend, “O’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.”