the sake of peace, but not for peace itself would I surrender liberty. It would be to suppose our merchants and manufacturers void of common foresight, could they believe that concession now will bring security hereafter. By yielding the moral question, they jeopard their pecuniary interests. Should the south succeed in their present attempt upon the territories, they will impatiently await the retirement of General Taylor from the executive chair, to add the “State of Cuba,” with its 500,000 slaves, its ignorance and its demoralization, to their roll of triumph. California will be a free-trade state, by the most certain of all biases. They will have nothing to sell but gold; they will have every thing to buy,--cradles and coffins, and all between. If New Mexico is slave, it will also be free trade; and Cuba as certainly as either,--though in that island facilities for smuggling will reduce the difference between tariff and free trade to nothing. A surrender, therefore, by our northern business men, will be most disastrous to the very business that tempts them to surrender. Will they take no warning from the fact that their apathy in regard to Texas repealed the tariff of 1842? This is a low motive, I admit; but it may be set as a back-fire to the motive by which some of them appear to be influenced. There was no need, not a shadow of need, of perilling any principle, nor any interest. Had the north stood firm, had they been true to the great principles they have so often and so solemnly proclaimed, the waves of southern violence would have struck harmless at their feet. He is not learned in the weather who does not know that storms from the south, though violent, are short. We are assailed now because we have yielded before. The compromise of 1820 begat the nullification of 1832; the compromise of 1832 inspired the mad exploit of compassing Texas, which our greater madness made sane. The moral paralysis which failed to oppose the Mexican war, has given us the territories. If the territories are now surrendered, we shall have Cuba, and an indefinite career of conquest and of slavery will be opened on our south-western border. Every new concession transfers strength from our side to the side of our opponents; and if we cannot arrest our own course when we are just entering the rapids, how can we arrest it when we come near the verge of the cataract? The south may rule the Union, but they cannot divide it. Their whole Atlantic seaboard is open to attack, and powerless for defence; and the Mississippi River may as easily be divided physically as politically into independent portions. With these advantages, let us never aggress upon their rights, but let us maintain our own.