What has ever
threatened our liberty and prosperity except this institution of
slavery? If this be true, how do you propose to improve the condition of
things by enlarging it? You may have a cancer upon your person and not
be able to cut it out lest you bleed to death, but surely it is no way
to cure it to graft it and spread it over your body. That is no proper
way of treating what you regard as wrong.
That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this
country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself are silent.
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles, right and
wrong, throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood
face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to
struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other is the
divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it
develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and
earn bread and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether
from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own
nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as
an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical
principle.
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