In this view of the case, may we not ask whether this base and cruel
attempt at subduing Kansas has not gone far enough? Have not the
circumstances shown that it is as impracticable as it is base and cruel?
Or are we to see the despotism of the New World as insanely obstinate as
the despotisms of the Old? Is there no warning, no instruction, to be
derived from the examples of those older nations? An eloquent historian
has recently depicted for us, in scenes which the memory can never lose,
the mad attempts of the House of Stuart to Romanize England, to the
loss of the most magnificent dominion the world ever saw; and another
historian, scarcely less eloquent, has drawn a series of fearfully
interesting pictures of the stern efforts of the Spaniards to impose
a detested State and a more detested Church upon the burghers of the
Netherlands. The spirit of James II., and the spirit of Philip II., was
the same spirit which is now striving to force Slavery and Slave Law
upon Kansas; and though the field of battle is narrower, and the scene
less conspicuous, the consequences of the struggle are hardly of less
moment. Kansas is the future seat of empire; she will yet give tone and
law to the entire West; and they who are fighting there, in behalf of
humanity and justice, do not fight for themselves alone, but for a large
posterity.
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