And yet, in the slave States, the interpretation of the Constitution is such, that the free States are accused of violating it, unless they acknowledge that it recognizes slavery as a natural right, and an institution to be perpetuated and enlarged, and put upon the same level with the blessing of freedom, in the territories. Slavery virtually must be nationalized, and the Constitution be interpreted so as to carry it all over the territories now existing, or to be acquired, or the free States have broken the Constitution, and the slave States may leave the Union whenever it suits their pleasure. It is easy to see how time has brought about such a revolution of feeling and idea respecting slavery. It can be shown that circumstances have changed altogether the relations of slavery, and while names have remained the same, the things which they represent have assumed a radical difference. It can be shown that the introduction of the cotton-gin, and the increased profits of slave labor, have given an impetus to the domestic institution that brings with it an entire revolution of opinion. When slavery was unprofitable to the slaveholders; when, in the early days of the republic, the number of slaves was comparatively small; when, all over the country, the veterans of the Revolution existed to testify to the hardships they endured for national independence, and eulogize even the help of the negro in securing it, then slavery was regarded a curse, an evil to be curtailed and in time obliterated; then the local character of slavery, as the creature of municipal law, not to be recognized where such law does not exist, was the opinion universally of the people. But now, with the growing profits of slavery, with the increase of the power of this institution, other and far different language is held. Disguise it as we may, there do exist great motives that have silently yet powerfully operated within the last thirty or forty years, to change the popular current of feeling and opinion. Not only have the slave States held the balance of political power, but the spread of slavery has been gigantic. The fairest regions of the South have been opened up to the domestic institution, and Texas annexed, with Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, making an immense area of country, to be the nursery of slavery. The political ascendency of the slave States has ever given to the South a great advantage, in the extension of their favored institution, and the result has proved that what our ancestors looked upon as an evil that time would soon do away with, has grown into a monster system that threatens to make subservient to it the free institutions of the North.