has no force, and wheels will not revolve. In Vermont and New York, wool will not grow on sheep’s backs. I have penetrated the geology of Pennsylvania, and through all its stratifications there is not a thimble full of coal, nor an ounce of iron ore; and, if there were, combustion would not help to forge it; for oxygen and carbon are divorced. As Massachusetts contributed one third of the men and one third of the money to carry on the revolutionary war, I am willing to compensate her for her lost blood and treasure to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars, with which she may fertilize the barrenness of her genius, and indulge her insane love for churches and schools.” Had the great southern senator spoken thus, I think that even idolatrous, man-worshipping South Carolina,--a state which Mr. Calhoun has ruled and moved for the last twenty-five years, as a puppet showman plays Punch and Judy,--would have sent forth, through all her organs, a voice of unanimous dissent. As much as freedom is higher than tariff, so much stronger than their dissent should be ours. Mr. Webster’s averment that he would not “reäffirm an ordinance of nature, nor reënact the will of God,” (p. 44,) has been commented on more pungently than I am able or willing to do. It has been well said that all law and all volition must be in harmony with the will of the Good Spirit, or with that of the evil one; and if we will not reënact the will of the former, then, either all legislation ceases, or we must register the decrees of the latter. But one important and pertinent consideration belongs to this subject, which I have nowhere seen developed. It is this: Endless doubts and contradictions exist among men, as to what is the will of God; and on no subject is there a wider diversity of opinion than on this very subject of slavery. Whose law was reënacted by the ordinance of 1787? whose, when the African slave trade was prohibited? whose, when it was declared piracy? True, it is useless to put upon our statute books an astronomical law, regulating sunrise, or high tides; but that is physical and beyond the jurisdiction of man, while slavery belongs to morals, and is within the jurisdiction of man. Cease to transcribe upon the statute book what our wisest and best men believe to be the will of God in regard to our worldly affairs, and the passions which we think appropriate to devils will soon take possession of society. In regard to slavery, piracy, and so forth, there are multitudes of men whose fear of the penal sanctions of another life is very much aided by a little salutary fine and imprisonment in this. Look at that noble array of principles which is contained in the Declaration of Rights in the constitution of Massachusetts. Is it not a most grand and beautiful exposition of “the will of God,”--a transcript, as it were, from the Book of Life? So of the amendments to the constitution of the United States. Yet our