I do not know how extensive the desire may be to set Slavery again on its feet under another name. But when we take into consideration the selfish tendencies of business, the disposition of the strong to appropriate the labor of the weak, and the reluctance of slave-masters to renounce habitual power, I have felt that Congress would fail in its duty, if it did not by special provision guard against any such outrage. There must be no Slavery under an _alias_. This infinite wrong must not be allowed to skulk in serfdom or compulsory labor. “Once free, always free,”--such is the maxim of justice and jurisprudence. But any system by which the freedmen may be annexed to the soil, like the old _adscripti glebæ_, will be in direct conflict with their newly acquired rights. They can be properly bound only by contract; and considering how easily they may be induced to enter into engagements ignorantly or heedlessly, and thus become the legal victims of designing men, it is evident that no precautions in their behalf can be too great. It is well known that in some of the British West Indies an attempt was made, at the period of emancipation, to establish a system of apprenticeship, which should be an intermediate condition between Slavery and Freedom. But the experiment failed. In some of the islands it was abandoned by the planters themselves, who frankly accepted emancipation outright; and in all it finally fell before the irresistible eloquence of Brougham. Here is a passage from one of his speeches. “They who always dreaded Emancipation, who were alarmed at the prospect of negro indolence, who stood aghast at the vision of negro rebellion, should the chains cease to rattle or the lash to resound through the air, gathering no wisdom from the past, still persist in affrighting themselves and scaring you with imaginary apprehensions from the transition to entire freedom out of the present intermediate state. But that intermediate state is the very source of all their real danger; and I disguise not its magnitude from myself. You have gone too far, if you stop here and go no farther; _you are in imminent hazard, if, having loosened the fetters, you do not strike them off_,--if, leaving them ineffectual to restrain, you let them remain to gall and to irritate and to goad. Beware of that state, yet more unnatural than slavery itself, _liberty bestowed by halves_. …