confine slavery to the country where it already existed, and thus surround the slave states with a cordon of free states, so as to increase year by year, the difficulties of prospective emancipation, and render any but a subversion of the institution by violence an impossibility. It was as injurious to the slaves themselves as to the white population of the states. Had the would-be philanthropists been governed by an enlightened regard for the welfare or freedom of the slaves, they would not have objected to their introduction, either into the territory north of 36° 30´ or that acquired from Mexico, for with the greater eagerness existing at the North for emigration, as well as that from foreign countries and the want of adaptation of the soil and climate of the greater part of the territory, old and new, to the staples in the production of which slave labor could be profitably employed, it was certain that much the larger population settling in that territory would be from the free states and foreign countries, and it was equally certain that, when the people came to form new states, slavery would be prohibited and freedom given to the slaves within the limits of most, if not all of those states. But fanaticism of no kind, whether political or religious, listens to reason, and among the pseudo-philanthropists there was much of the leaven of that old spirit, which had prompted the hanging, burning and scourging of "heretics and witches." There were many politicians by trade, whose aspirations had been unsuccessful and who cared nothing for the negro or the cause of freedom, but who fell in with the "free-soil" movement, as it was called with the selfish hope of building up a great sectional party under the auspices of which they could obtain and retain that power which they had failed to acquire otherwise. A very large mass of men rarely think for themselves and among this class the leaders of the "free-soil" operated extensively by impassioned appeals to their prejudices and passions, inducing them to believe that their vital interests required that slavery should be excluded by law from the territories. One of the shrewdest and most far-seeing of the "free-soil" leaders boldly declared that there was a "higher law" than the Constitution and that there was "an _impassable_ conflict between slavery and freedom." It cannot be denied that there were extreme men at the South on the other side, but they were made so mostly by the hostile attitude assumed by their opponents.