arisen from this question of slavery, and are incidental to it and a
part of it. Massachusetts, as we all know, is democratic in its
tendencies, but South Carolina is essentially aristocratic. This
difference has come of slavery. A slave country, which has
progressed far in slavery, must be aristocratic in its nature--
aristocratic and patriarchal. A large slaveowner from Georgia may
call himself a democrat, may think that he reveres republican
institutions, and may talk with American horror of the thrones of
Europe; but he must in his heart be an aristocrat. We, in England,
are apt to speak of republican institutions, and of universal
suffrage, which is perhaps the chief of them, as belonging equally
to all the States. In South Carolina there is not and has not been
any such thing. The electors for the President there are chosen not
by the people, but by the legislature; and the votes for the
legislature are limited by a high property qualification. A high
property qualification is required for a member of the House of
Representatives in South Carolina; four hundred freehold acres of
land and ten negroes is one qualification. Five hundred pounds
clear of debt is another qualification; for, where a sum of money is
thus named, it is given in English money. Russia and England are
not more unlike in their political and social feelings than are the
real slave States and the real free-soil States. The gentlemen from
one and from the other side of the line have met together on neutral
ground, and have discussed political matters without flying
frequently at each other's throats, while the great question on
which they differed was allowed to slumber. But the awakening has
been coming by degrees, and now the South had felt that it was come.
Old John Brown, who did his best to create a servile insurrection at
Harper's Ferry, has been canonized through the North and West, to
the amazement and horror of the South. The decision in the "Dred