history! How is this? The abstract opinions and sentiments in question, pervading our literature, our politics, and our theology, have been adopted by so many of our citizens as to entitle the doctrine to be regarded as a kind of national belief--the sentiment a kind of national feeling. We are told that all men _believe_ slavery to be wrong in principle; that is, wrong in itself! and that all men feel that it is wrong! And certain it is, there is more truth than fiction in all this! It is strictly true, as to the citizens of the so-called free States. The same doctrine is not without advocates at the South; whilst many more, as we have before stated, who may not be said to believe it, are nevertheless often the subjects of painful misgivings. They _fear_ it may be true. The causes to which we have traced this, fully account for it; and we need not fear to state the truth. But then again, the question recurs--How is this, that the institution itself, a great practical truth, should daily, for a long series of years, become more and more practical--a fixed fact in the country? Truly, this is a phenomenon for which the philosophy of the day will not account. If those who believed this doctrine were ruthless fanatics--ultra abolitionists in the strictest sense--if those who oppose it were really “pro-slavery” men, in the bad sense in which certain persons understand this phrase, that is, men who, on the subject of slavery, wickedly do what they know and feel to be wrong: on either hypothesis we could account for the phenomenon in question. But these are not the men with whom I deal in these lectures. I lay all such out of the account. They are men not to be reasoned with. No: the men of whom I speak, both North and South, are candid, honest men. I personally know many of them at the North. I have met them on great battle-fields, where more than blood was shed! I know them to be good men and true, and I believe the same of the large class they represent. With many of those at the South who affiliate with them in opinion as firm believers in Jefferson’s doctrine, or whose embryo opinions excite painful misgivings of mind, I have often communed freely, and have equal confidence in their integrity and honesty. The whole taken together form a very numerous class, and may be safely regarded as embodying the national belief and feeling on the subject of slavery. And yet we find that slavery is a great practical truth, a fixed fact in the country. Now, can it be true that this opinion and feeling embodies a great abstract truth--a fundamental, vital, immutable principle, which never did and never can fail to hold practical error in check, because it takes hold of the conscience of an honest people--and whose tendency, therefore, is always to an ultimate practical triumph, with all those who honestly receive it? We dare not affirm this.