The question of slavery was not born at the time of which we write.

Nicias and Demosthenes were put to death in cold blood, and their men either perished miserably in the Syracusan dungeons or were sold into slavery to the very persons whom, in their pride of power, they had crossed the seas to enslave.

In his first message he complacently congratulated the country that the slavery question had been settled peacefully and forever by the compromise measures of 1850.

The abrogation of this compromise, which had been looked upon as a sacred compact, convinced a majority of the Northern people that the system of slavery was filled with the spirit of aggressiveness and determined to spread itself into all the Territories.

Consequently there arose for the first time a powerful anti-slavery party, which, while denying that it had any purpose of meddling with that institution in the States where it already existed, declared that it should never be extended into any more of the national domain.

We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition.

This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers, "That is a question for the Supreme Court.

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up.

I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mindthe principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end.

That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master.

While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it.

The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a State over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson.

On one occasion, his exact language is, "Except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction.

Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits.

And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.

How can he oppose the advances of slavery?

He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and, as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave-tradehow can he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free"unless

But the result was the same; feudal government, a graduated system of jurisdiction based on land tenure, in which every lord judged, taxed, and commanded the class next below him, of which abject slavery formed the lowest, and irresponsible tyranny the highest grade, and private war, private coinage, private prisons, took the place of the imperial institutions of government.

Back to America next as Professor of Physiology at the University of Richmond, Virginia, a job occupied for a few months only because of his opinions on slavery, ostensibly anyhow.

Now restlessness reigns throughout every station; The low would be high, and the high would be higher; Now Freedom's the word, That unsheaths ev'ry sword, But don't be deceiv'd by such pretexts as these: 'Tis not Freedom, nor Slavery, That calls for your Bravery; 'Tis, only a Scramble for more Bread and Cheese.