*
* *
And Mr. Sumner "knows no better aim, under the Constitution, than to
bring back the government to where it was in 1789!" Has the voyage been
so very honest and prosperous a one, in his opinion, that his only
wish is to start again with the same ship, the same crew, and the same
sailing orders? Grant all he claims as to the state of public opinion,
the intentions of leading men, and the form of our institutions at that
period; still, with all these checks on wicked men, and helps to good
ones, here we are, in 1853, according to his own showing, ruled by
slavery, tainted to the core with slavery, and binding the infamous
Fugitive Slave Law like an honorable frontlet on our brows. The more
accurate and truthful his glowing picture of the public virtue of 1789,
the stronger my argument. If even all those great patriots, and all that
enthusiasm for justice and liberty, did not avail to keep us safe
in such a Union, what will? In such desperate circumstances, can his
statesmanship devise no better aim than to try the same experiment over
again, under precisely the same conditions? What new guaranties does he
propose to prevent the voyage from being again turned into a piratical
slave-trading cruise? None! Have sixty years taught us nothing? In 1660,
the English thought, in recalling Charles II.
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