From a metaphysical point of view the only question between Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun was whether every departure from the perfect good must be considered an evil, or whether a nearer approximation to the perfect good may be called a good in contrast with a lower approximation. Mr. Rives was looking at the subject {267} from an abstract, transcendental point of view, while Mr. Calhoun was regarding it from the historical point of view. Mr. Rives was with the Abolitionists upon the abstract principle, but against them as to the time and means of applying it. Mr. Calhoun was not against the Abolitionists upon the abstract principle, but the time of its possible application appeared to him so far distant, and the impropriety and unfairness of interference by outsiders in the matter and the disastrous consequences which must flow from such interference seemed to him so plain and so certain, that he almost lost sight of the abstract height upon which the Abolitionists stood behind the many intervening elevations, which must be first attained and traversed in order to reach their position. [Sidenote: The moral ground upon which Calhoun and the Abolitionists could have met.] There was a possible moral ground upon which Mr. Calhoun and the Abolitionists might have met. Could the Abolitionists have conceived that the existence of certain conditions would justify domestic slavery as a relation which could _temporarily_ produce a better state of morals in a particularly constituted society than any other relation, that is, could they have taken the historical view of ethics, the evolutionary view of morals, and could Mr. Calhoun have seen that the time had come for a modification of the existing form of negro slavery in the South, for a step toward a greater degree of personal liberty for the slave, an approach between him and them might have been, at least, begun; but their implacable dogmatism, and his stern resentment at their persistent interference in what he thought no concern of theirs, widened the gulf between him and them from day to day. They regarded him as a sinner and a criminal because he held persons to service and labor who had not freely agreed to the same, and he {268} considered them to be greater sinners and criminals because they would overturn the existing order of society in communities where they had no personal interests to be affected, and would introduce into these communities the reign of plunder, rapine, and murder. [Sidenote: Mr. Calhoun's resolutions in regard to the political relations of slavery.]