Now, it is apparent, this reasoning being admitted, that the attempt to perpetuate slavery, which in its nature is temporary and transitional, is contrary to the palpable laws of social existence and progress, and, if persisted in beyond a certain point, must inevitably lead to violence and disorder. Nature, the supreme authority, by her unalterable laws, wills and decrees one thing; man, in his ignorance and audacity, attempts the opposite. Conflict must necessarily follow; but the decrees of the higher power will be inexorably enforced; they will sweep away every structure, great or small, which man, in all the pride of his puny strength and glimmering wisdom, may vainly seek to place as an obstruction in their path. But, when the Southern people adopted this false idea, that slavery could be perpetuated and made the foundation of stable institutions, they not only placed themselves in conflict with the decrees of natural law, which was the most important and fatal error, but they also indicated hostility to those vital provisions of the Constitution to which reference has already been made. No thoughtful observer of events in this country will require evidence to sustain this assertion. The constant evasion of the law prohibiting the slave trade, and the impunity with which it was frequently and sometimes openly violated, as well as the known public opinion throughout the South on this subject and on that of European immigration, are quite sufficient to establish it. The violent resistance, by fraud and even bloodshed, to the settlement of the Territories by free white men, and the determined effort to establish the law of slavery in every region, against even the vote of the majority, and without any actual interest or necessity for so doing, evince too plainly that the Southern people were not prepared to accept the results of the proper workings of the Constitution, which gave preponderance, in the number of States and in Federal representation, to the ever-increasing free white men, against the relatively diminishing numbers of the slaves and their owners. This inequality of power was continually becoming greater, and evidently could not be avoided or remedied under the Constitution, without a complete reversal of the policy of its framers, and of the contemporaneous construction which they placed on it.