Slavery has now come to be a mighty energy of disquietude all over the country, assuming colossal proportions of mischief, and mocking all the ordinary restraints of law. The question of the present day to be decided is not whether freedom and slavery shall exist side by side, nor whether slavery shall be tolerated as a necessary evil; but in reality, whether freedom shall be crushed under the iron hoof of slavery, and this institution shall obtain the complete control of the country. It has been said that the Constitution takes the position of complete indifference to slavery; but the history of the slave States does not lead us to infer that they were ever willing that slavery should be tested by its own merits, or stand without the most persistent efforts to secure for it the patronage of the Federal Government. Study the progress of slavery, the last forty years, and none can fail to see that it has ever aimed to secure first the supreme political control, and then to advance its own selfish interests, at the expense of free institutions. The great danger has always been, that while numerically vastly inferior to the North, slavery has always been an unit, with a single eye to its own aggrandizement; consequently, the history of the country will show that so far from the general policy of the government being adverse to slavery, that policy has been almost exclusively upon the side of slaveholders. The domestic institution has been ever the pet interest of the land. In all that pertains to political power, the slaveholding interests have been in the ascendant. Even when Lincoln was elected, it was found that the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the Judiciary, were numerically upon the side of slavery, so that he could not, even had it been his wish, carry out any measure inimical to the South. True, the South had not the same power as under Buchanan; they could not hope ever again to wield the resources of government to secure the ascendency of slavery in Kansas; but for all that, Lincoln was powerless to encroach upon their supposed rights, even if thus disposed. Is it not, then, evident, that so far from the slaveholding States holding to the opinions of the framers of the Constitution, there has been within the last forty years a mighty change going on in the South, giving to slavery an essentially aggressive policy, and an extension never dreamed of by the authors of the Constitution? The ground of the Constitution respecting slavery, was simply non-interference in the States where it already existed. It left slavery to be curtailed, or done away with by the local legislature, but it used language the most guarded, to preclude the idea that slavery rested upon natural right, and that slaves, like other property, could be carried into the territories. It has been said, that the position of the Constitution is that of absolute indifference, both to freedom and slavery; that it advocated neither,