while the secondary class of our people might have filled very enviable positions in contrast to what they now fill in that country; for, you remember, that the acquisition of territory from Mexico changed none of her laws relating to her resident citizens in any part of the territory ceded to, or purchased by, the United States. What, then, kept us from joining with the English and French emigrants in California before the war?—becoming citizens under the law of Mexico, and forcing the United States, by the laws of nations, to respect that position to the present day, as she does blacker men and less cultivated than two-thirds of the colored people of the United States—who cannot even enjoy their oath against one of those fellows, black though he be, if he happen to be a Mexican? The reason is obvious; white men, seeing the result of such a measure, denied our identity of interest with the colored people favored by the laws of Mexico and California; and though Mexico entreated us to make our home with them, (as Hayti now entreats us from the same reasons,) we objected. Our leading men, reasoning upon this absurd theory of prejudiced white men, counseled us to stand still and see the salvation of God; but instead of the analogy being carried out, and we seeing our oppressors declining in strength, as did Israel, we see them day by day growing stronger; until they had made that blessed land of Freedom as odious from their accursed prejudice as any other part of the United States, and now these same leaders cease to counsel standing still, but counsel our going to California. In the name of heaven, I ask, for what should we now go there? They say, to better their condition and make a living; I say to become worse slaves and menials than us they leave behind. This is the stand-still policy I am at variance with; standing still till all advantages are lost, and we are left in the same darkness and degradation that a brilliant epoch in the history of our country has found us, and is compelled to leave us, because we refuse to get up and run with the world to the great issue to which she is tending—universal Freedom. There is no such thing as stand still in this nineteenth century; you must progress backward or forward; the world is rushing on; he or they who will not move with her, must be crushed by her onward march.