I do not content myself with a single objection to this outrageous consummation. There is another, of a different nature. Assuming, for the moment, what I glory to believe can never happen, that the _new_ Slave Power has become independent _in fact_, while the national flag has sunk away exhausted in the contest, there is one objection which, in an age of Christian light, thank God, cannot be overcome, unless, after solemn covenants branding Slavery, the great powers shall forget their vows, while England, the declared protectress of the African race, and France, the declared champion of “ideas,” both break away from the irresistible logic of their history, and turn their backs upon the past. Vain is honor, vain is human confidence, if these nations, at a moment of high duty, can thus ignobly fail. “Renown and grace is dead.” Like the other objection, this is _of fact_ also,--for it is founded on the character of the pretension claiming recognition, which constitutes _fact_. Perhaps it may be said that it is a question of policy; but it is of policy which ought to be beyond debate, _if such fact be established_. Something more is necessary than that the new power shall be _de facto_ independent. _De facto_ it must be _fit_ for independence; and, from the nature of the case, every nation will judge of this fitness _in fact_. Undertaking to acknowledge a _new_ power, you proclaim its fitness for welcome and association in the Family of Nations. Can England gazette such a proclamation, elevating the whippers of women and sellers of children? Can France permit Louis Napoleon to do the same? Here, on the threshold of this inquiry, the true state of the question must not be forgotten. It is not whether old and existing relations shall be continued with a power permitting Slavery, but _whether relations shall be commenced with a new power_, not merely permitting Slavery, but building its whole intolerable pretension upon this Barbarism. “No _new_ Slave State” is a watchword with which we are familiar in our domestic history; but even such cry does not reveal the full opposition to the _new_ revolt against Civilization,--for, even if disposed to admit a _new_ Slave State, there must be, among men who have not yet lost all sense of decency, undying resistance to the admission of a _new_ Slave Power with such an unquestioned origin and such an unquestioned purpose as that which now flaunts in piracy and blood before the civilized world, seeking recognition for its criminal chimera. Here is nothing for nice casuistry. Duty is plain as the moral law or the multiplication table.