According to a famous saying, Russia is a “despotism tempered by assassination”; but even the steel of Brutus, refulgent in the Capitol, without the supplementary fulfilment of the wish of Caligula, that all should have a single life, must fail to reach our despotism, which in numbers enjoys an immunity beyond any solitary tyrant. Surely, if the Oligarchy is to live yet longer, its badges should symbolize its peculiar despotism born of Slavery. The coin, seal, and flag must be changed. Let the eagle be removed, giving place to the foul vulture with vulgar beak and filthy claw,--how unlike that bird of Jove, with ample pinion, and those mighty pounces, holding the dread thunderbolt and better olive of peace!--and instead of these, let there be fetter and lash, borrowed from the plantation, which is the miniature of the broader plantation to which the Republic is reduced. That appearance may be according to reality, and that we may not seem what we are not, this at least must be done. Abandon, too, the stars and stripes,--the stars numbering the present Union, the stripes numbering that Union which gave to mankind the Declaration of Independence with immortal truth; and let these also be replaced by the universal fetter and lash, for here is typified our Oligarchy, in all present power, as in all vital principle. Fetter and lash! The schoolboy shall grow up honoring the chosen emblems; the citizen shall hail them with sympathetic pride; the Republic shall be known by them on coin, seal, and flag; while the ruler of the subjugated land, no longer President, shall be called Overseer. * * * * * Of course, fellow-citizens, you are now ready to see that the corruptions by which the present Administration is degraded are the natural offspring of slaveholding immorality. They have all concurred in sustaining the policy of the Oligarchy, and in the case of the Lecompton Constitution in direct effort to fasten Slavery upon a distant Territory, and they are all marked by the effrontery of Slavery. There is also its vulgarity; but this is natural; for is not pretension a fruitful source of vulgarity? and, pray, what is Slavery, but an enormous Pretension? Smollett attributes the peculiar profligacy of England at a particular period to the demoralization of the South Sea Bubble; but what is such a fugitive influence, compared with Slavery, which, indeed, if it were not a crime, might well be called a Bubble? A Government which vindicates the sale of human beings need not hesitate to purchase votes, whether at the polls or in Congress. The two transactions belong to the same family, though unquestionably the last is the least reprehensible. * * * * *