and eminently so in the cities of New York and Cincinnati?--and is this evil also destined to reach the national Legislature, either directly, as the result of numerical strength, or indirectly, as the action of a powerful minority, holding the balance of power between contending political parties, and, in either case, sooner or later, seriously threatening if not precipitating evils upon the whole country, of which the oppressions of many of the States of Europe now furnish us the mournful examples! But no such influence can ever reach, to any material extent, the ballot-boxes of the South. With an educated sovereignty, we have only to consummate our triumph over intemperance, and our elections are at once fair exponents of the will of an enlightened people. Our people may err in opinion, but, always right in sentiment, and with no motive to stay wrong, they may, in due time, be put right in _opinion_ also. The Southern States may be labored by the tempests that shall break upon them from other sources, but not from this, which its history in Europe shows to be the most terrible calamity that ever scourged humanity. With their ships well trimmed and their sails well set, and both worked and governed by an educated sovereignty, it is morally impossible that they should founder in the open sea of free discussion. These States, therefore, will remain, and shall ever remain, through all this fierce conflict, _free_ to settle the great quarrel of the country between light and darkness, between religion and a vile superstition! Upon these States will devolve the duty of holding the balance of power between these great contending forces, and of preserving the ark of American liberty in the politico-religious storms that are to sweep over the land, and shake the foundations of our confederacy. In view of all the facts, we are at no loss to account for the agrarian doctrines and organizations which are already so common in the Northern States, and which are essentially so entirely subversive of all true liberty. Nor are we at a loss to account for the fact that the Southern States have always, to the present time, stood forth as the authors and uniform expounders of the soundest democratic principles of republican freedom. They owe it, and will for ages to come continue to owe it, not so much to any superior devotion to sound principles above that of their intelligent and unbiased brethren of other States, but to the fact that only a small portion of their menial population are, or ever can be, sovereigns. The great mass of their menials belong to a distinct and inferior race, who never can be absorbed, and who, therefore, are not and never can become sovereigns of the land. The conservative influence, therefore, of the African race in the Southern States, I set down as a _fixed fact_, for which, in the prospective condition of the country, we have abundant cause to be devoutly thankful to Almighty God.