On former occasions I have discussed Slavery only incidentally: as, in unfolding the principle that Slavery is Sectional and Freedom National; in exposing the unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Bill; in vindicating the Prohibition of Slavery in the Missouri Territory; in exhibiting the imbecility, throughout the Revolution, of the Slave States, and especially of South Carolina; and, lastly, in unmasking the Crime against Kansas. On all these occasions, where I spoke at length, I said too little of the character of Slavery,--partly because other topics were presented, and partly from a prevailing disinclination to press the argument against those whom I knew to have all the sensitiveness of a sick man. But, God be praised, this time has passed, and the debate is now lifted from details to principles. Grander debate has not occurred in our history,--rarely in any history; nor can it close or subside, except with the triumph of Freedom. FIRST ASSUMPTION. Of course I begin with the assumption of fact, which must be treated at length. It was the often-quoted remark of John Wesley, who knew well how to use words, as also how to touch hearts, that Slavery is “the sum of all villanies.” The phrase is pungent; but it were rash in any of us to criticise the testimony of that illustrious founder of Methodism, whose ample experience of Slavery in Georgia and the Carolinas seems to have been all condensed in this sententious judgment. Language is feeble to express all the enormity of an institution which is now exalted as in itself a form of civilization, “ennobling” at least to the master, if not to the slave. Look at it as you will, and it is always the scab, the canker, the “barebones,” and the shame of the country,--wrong, not merely in the abstract, as is often admitted by its apologist, but wrong in the concrete also, and possessing no single element of right. Look at it in the light of principle, and it is nothing less than a huge insurrection against the eternal law of God, involving in its pretensions the denial of all human rights, and also the denial of that Divine Law in which God himself is manifest, thus being practically the grossest lie and the grossest atheism. Founded in violence, sustained only by violence, such a wrong must by sure law of compensation blast master as well as slave,--blast the lands on which they live, blast the community of which they are part, blast the government which does not forbid the outrage; and the longer it exists and the more completely it prevails, must its vengeful influences penetrate the whole social system. Barbarous in origin, barbarous in law, barbarous in all its pretensions, barbarous in the instruments it employs, barbarous in consequences, barbarous in spirit, barbarous wherever it shows itself, Slavery must breed Barbarians, while it develops everywhere, alike in the individual and the society to which he belongs, the essential elements of Barbarism.