Fellow-citizens, I would gladly relieve the darkness of this picture by some gleams of light. There are two hopes which, as yet, are not wholly extinguished in my mind. Beyond all question, a compromise bill will be reported by the committee of thirteen, in which free California will be made to carry as great a burden of slavery as she can bear. It is still _possible_ that the House will treat, as it deserves, this adulterous union. A single vote may turn the scale, and Massachusetts may give that vote. Not improbably, too, the fate of the bill may depend upon the earnestness and decision with which northern constituencies make their sentiments known to their representatives, whether by petitions, by private letters, or by public resolutions. Let every lover of freedom do his best and his most. Should the north fail, I have still one hope more. It is, that New Mexico will do for herself what we shall have basely failed to do for her. If both these hopes fail, our country is doomed to run its unobstructed career of conquest, of despotism, and of infamy. I have now, my fellow-citizens, given you my “Views and Opinions” on the present crisis in our public affairs. Had I regarded my own feelings, I should have spoken less at length; but the subject has commanded me. I trust I have spoken respectfully towards those from whom I dissent, while speaking my own sentiments justly and truly. I have used no asperity; for all my emotions have been of grief, and not of anger. My words have been cool as the telegraphic wires, while my feelings have been like the lightning that runs through them. The idea that Massachusetts should contribute or consent to the extension of human slavery!--is it not enough, not merely to arouse the living from their torpor, but the dead from their graves! Were I to help this, nay, did I not oppose it with all the powers and faculties which God has given me, I should see myriads of agonized faces glaring out upon me from the future, more terrible than Duncan’s at Macbeth; and I would rather feel an assassin’s poniard in my breast than forever hereafter to see “the air-drawn dagger” of a guilty memory. In Massachusetts, the great drama of the revolution began. Some of its heroes yet survive amongst us. At Lexington, at Concord, and on Bunker Hill, the grass still grows greener where the soil was fattened with the blood of our fathers. If, in the providence of God, we must be vanquished in this contest, let it be by force of the overmastering and inscrutable powers above us, and not by our own base desertion. I am, gentlemen, your much honored, obliged, and obedient servant, HORACE MANN. LETTER II. TO THE EDITORS OF THE BOSTON ATLAS;