It will not do for the
Republicans to confine themselves to the mere political argument, for
the matter then becomes one of expediency, with two defensible sides
to it; they must go deeper, to the radical question of Right and
Wrong, or they surrender the chief advantage of their position. What
Spinoza says of laws is equally true of party-platforms,--that those
are strong which appeal to reason, but those are impregnable which
compel the assent both of reason and the common affections of mankind.
No man pretends that under the Constitution there is any possibility
of interference with the domestic relations of the individual States;
no party has ever remotely hinted at any such interference; but what
the Republicans affirm is, that in every contingency where the
Constitution can be construed in favor of freedom, it ought to be and
shall be so construed. It is idle to talk of sectionalism,
abolitionism, and hostility to the laws. The principles of liberty and
humanity cannot, by virtue of their very nature, be sectional, any
more than light and heat. Prevention is not abolition, and unjust laws
are the only serious enemies that Law ever had. With history before
us, it is no treason to question the infallibility of a court; for
courts are never wiser or more venerable than the men composing them,
and a decision that reverses precedent cannot arrogate to itself any
immunity from reversal. Truth is the only unrepealable thing.
We are gravely requested to have no opinion, or, having one, to
suppress it, on the one topic that has occupied caucuses, newspapers,
Presidents' messages, and Congress, for the last dozen years, lest we
endanger the safety of the Union.
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