Then we were told that the white and black races could dwell together only in the relation of masters and slaves,--and, in the same breath, that in this relation the slaves were steadily advancing in civilization and Christianity. But, if steadily advancing in civilization and Christianity, the time must inevitably come when they would not submit to be slaves; and then what becomes of the statement that the white and black races cannot dwell together as freemen? Why boast of their improvement, when you are improving them only that you may exterminate them, or they _you?_ Then, with a composure of face which touches the exquisite in effrontery, we were assured that this antithesis of master and slave, of tyrant and abject natures, is really a perfect harmony. Slavery--so said these logicians of liberticide--has solved the great social problem of the working-classes, comfortably for capital, happily for labor; and has effected this by an ingenious expedient which could have occurred only to minds of the greatest depth and comprehension, the expedient, namely, of enslaving labor. Now doubtless there has always been a struggle between employers and employed, and this struggle will probably continue until the relations between the two are more humane and Christian. But Slavery exhibits this struggle in its earliest and most savage stage, a stage answering to the rude energies and still ruder conceptions of barbarians. The issue of the struggle, it is plain, will not be that capital will own labor, but that labor will own capital, and no _man_ be owned. Still we were vehemently told, that, though the slaves, for their own good, were deprived of their rights as men, they were in a fine state of physical comfort. This was not and could not be true; but even if it were, it only represented the slaveholder as addressing his slave in some such words of derisive scorn as Byron hurls at Duke Alphonso,-- "Thou! born to eat, and be despised, and die, Even as the brutes that perish,"-- though we doubt if he could truly add,-- "save that thou Hast a more splendid trough and wider sty." Then we were solemnly warned of our patriotic duty to "know no North and no South." This was the very impudence of ingratitude; for we had long known no North, and unhappily had known altogether too much South. Then we were most plaintively adjured to to comply with the demands of the Slave Power, in order to save the Union. But how save the Union? Why, by violating the principles on which the Union was formed, and scouting the objects it was intended to serve.