_We_ certainly have reason to believe that the existence of domestic slavery among us has been of singular advantage in preserving the free spirit of our people. Slave labor pre-occupies and fills the low and degrading stations in society. Menial offices are altogether discharged by it; and all the tasks of mere brute strength are left to it. To the freeman belong those services which imply trust and confidence, or require skill; which therefore command higher wages than mere animal labor, and give a sense of respectability and a feeling of self-respect. I know we are told that if we wish to see the perfection of free government, we must look elsewhere. We look; and we do indeed see the theory of democracy carried to its full extent, but we behold no practical results which we at all envy. We do not find that any good has come from elevating the whole class of laborers, in all its servile and degraded branches, to the sovereign privilege of voting. We believed _a priori_ (and observation proves that we were right) that the first and only use the hireling would make of his political franchise, would be to sell it to the demagogue. _But though convinced of this, the experience of other states justifies a doubt, whether_, IF ALL OUR LABORERS WERE FREEMEN, _it would be possible to withhold from them the privilege of voting_. We know that it has been elsewhere wrung from the reluctant grasp of the freeholders, who deeply, _but silently_, lament the forced concession. Our statesmen have been _privately_ admonished by them to profit by the experience of their error, and hold fast by our institutions. _Publicly_ indeed, we are taunted with what are called the aristocratic features of our government; but we know, and the enemies of freedom know it too, that when power has marched unchecked and unchallenged over the prostrate democracy of free labor and universal suffrage, it has always found here the most formidable barriers to its progress. * * * * * I take the liberty of appending, by way of note, a quotation from the same statesman, whose words I have already used, which shows that this idea of the connexion between DOMESTIC _slavery_ and MUNICIPAL _liberty_, is not new. Our _former oppressors_ were aware of it sixty years ago, and seriously meditated the destruction of the latter by the abolition of the former. The following extract may show where our _present oppressors_ got the first hint of that scheme of interested philanthropy which proposes to strip us of our property for the good of our souls.