MR. PRESIDENT,--If an angel from the skies or a stranger from another planet were permitted to visit this earth and to examine its surface, who can doubt that his eyes would rest with astonishment upon the outstretched extent and exhaustless resources of this republic, young in years, but already rooted beyond any dynasty in history? In proportion as he considered and understood all that enters into and constitutes the national life, his astonishment would increase, for he would find a numerous people, powerful beyond precedent, without king or noble, but with the schoolmaster instead. And yet the astonishment he confessed, as all these things unrolled before him, would swell into marvel, as he learned that in this republic, arresting his admiration, where is neither king nor noble, but the schoolmaster instead, there are four million human beings in abject bondage, degraded to be chattels, under the pretence of property in man, driven by the lash like beasts, despoiled of all rights, even the right to knowledge and the sacred right of family, so that the relation of husband and wife is impossible and no parent can claim his own child, while all are condemned to brutish ignorance. Startled by what he beheld, the stranger would naturally inquire by what authority, under what sanction, and through what terms of law or constitution, this fearful inconsistency, so shocking to human nature itself, continues to be upheld. His growing wonder would know no bound, when he was pointed to the Constitution of the United States, as final guardian and conservator of this peculiar and many-headed wickedness. “And is it true,” the stranger would exclaim, “that, in laying the foundations of this republic dedicated to human rights, all these wrongs were positively established?” He would ask to see that Constitution, and to know the fatal words by which the sacrifice was commanded. The trembling with which he began its perusal would be succeeded by joy as he finished; for he would find nothing in that golden text, not a single sentence, phrase, or word even, to serve as origin, authority, or apology for the outrage. And then his wonder, already knowing no bound, would break forth anew, as he exclaimed, “Shameful and irrational as is Slavery, it is not more shameful or irrational than the unsupported interpretation which makes your Constitution final guardian and conservator of this terrible and unpardonable apostasy.”