Language has lost its meaning in the universal cant. _Representative Government_ is really misrepresentative; _Union_ is a conspiracy against the Northern States which the Northern States are to have the privilege of paying for; the _adding of Cuba and Central America_ to the slave marts is _enlarging the area of Freedom_. _Manifest Destiny_, _Democracy_, _Freedom_, fine names for an ugly thing. They call it otto of rose and lavender,—I call it bilge-water. They call it Chivalry and Freedom; I call it the stealing all the earnings of a poor man and the earnings of his little girl and boy, and the earnings of all that shall come from him, his children’s children forever. But this is Union, and this is Democracy; and our poor people, led by the nose by these fine words, dance and sing, ring bells and fire cannon, with every new link of the chain which is forged for their limbs by the plotters in the Capitol. What are the results of law and union? There is no Union. Can any citizen of Massachusetts travel in honor through Kentucky and Alabama and speak his mind? Or can any citizen of the Southern country who happens to think kidnapping a bad thing, say so? Let Mr. Underwood of Virginia answer. Is it to be supposed that there are no men in Carolina who dissent from the popular sentiment now reigning there? It must happen, in the variety of human opinions, that there are dissenters. They are silent as the grave. Are there no women in that country,—women, who always carry the conscience of a people? Yet we have not heard one discordant whisper. In the free states, we give a snivelling support to slavery. The judges give cowardly interpretations to the law, in direct opposition to the known foundation of all law, that _every immoral statute is void_. And here of Kansas, the President says: “Let the complainants go to the courts;” though he knows that when the poor plundered farmer comes to the court, he finds the ringleader who has robbed him dismounting from his own horse, and unbuckling his knife to sit as his judge. The President told the Kansas Committee that the whole difficulty grew from “the factious spirit of the Kansas people respecting institutions which they need not have concerned themselves about.” A very remarkable speech from a Democratic President to his fellow citizens, that they are not to concern themselves with institutions which they alone are to create and determine. The President is a lawyer, and should know the statutes of the land. But I borrow the language of an eminent man, used long since, with far less occasion: “If that be law, let the ploughshare be run under the foundations of the Capitol;”—and if that be Government, extirpation is the only cure.