It is not mere belief, nor is it mere honesty, that produces results in practice; but it is the _reception of the truth in an honest heart_, which can never fail to result in practice. Now in this case the people are honest, and the people believe; and if it be essential truth which they thus believe, then, we say, the fact that in all those States of this republic in which climate and soil are adapted to African labor--that precisely there the institution of domestic slavery should be rooted in the practice of a large portion of this believing and honest people, and that it should strike its roots into the federal constitution, and penetrate deeper and deeper every year into the legislation of the whole country, and thus implicate more and more the whole mass of this believing people in the sin of it, is a phenomenon, for which the postulate, that it is the truth they believe, does not account--nor can it be made to account. A false principle may be believed to be the truth. And a false principle believed, has its results, because it is believed; and they very much resemble the results of truth believed. But we dare not admit that error can take hold of the conscience as pure principle, essential truth will do it. But, again, there is another great psychological fact, which is often overlooked. A false principle may be honestly believed by minds which, at the same time, adopt antagonistic principles that are essential truths; but, owing to various causes calculated to confuse the ideas, the inconsistency is not perceived. Now, in such a case as this, the principle of essential truth is really brought into practical antagonism with essential error, and that in the same minds and upon the same subject. And as truth is more powerful than error in the minds of all honest people, the truth holds its way in practical results, in defiance of false principle, which is relatively powerless in the presence of truth. The antagonism between the false principle and the practical results of things may be perceived and acknowledged; whilst the antagonism of the false principle with the true principle, which underlies and produces these practical results by a law of its own operation, is not only not perceived, but actually denied to exist. Now so long as this false principle is honestly believed to be true, and clearly perceived to be in conflict with the _practice_, but not perceived to be in conflict with other and more latent principles, which are in themselves _truths_, and admitted to be _truths_, and which produce this _practice_, just so long will this false principle wage war, by the simple law of belief, against this _practice_. But as this war is not sufficiently potent to overturn this practice, because it is founded on the belief of principles _true_ in themselves, the practice will remain; and so long as this false belief remains, the strife with the practice must remain. Hence, if this be the state of the public mind