First, the abstractionists of the Virginia schoolmen who "would cavil for the ninth part of a hair"affirmed in general terms, that this Government was established with the view of regulating our external affairs, leaving all internal matters to be regulated by the States; and then, descending to particulars, declared, that, while Congress had the power to make improvements on salt water, it could do nothing on fresh.

In both the Slave and the Free States, the discussion of the essential principles on which Slavery rests was confined to a few disappointed Nullifiers and a few uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and North in one category of pestilent "abstractionists."