They respect the ministers of religion of every sect-seek willingly and freely their spiritual aids and consolations; but they do not regard them as either the sole or the best instructors of youth, whether in matters of religion or matters of science. They have a firm conviction of the sufficiency of laymen to regulate affairs of education, and they prefer to confine the minister to the service of the altar. They think the less their children are taught why they turn their backs on each other when they pray to the same God, the better for them.

They look to other sources of religious instruction for the young, which they are careful to provide.

They think the first lispings of infant piety are best poured forth at the mother's knee; that the first inspirations of spiritual truth flow best from the mother's lips; that the earliest guides in religious conduct are the living examples of the mother's walk and conversation, aided by the free Sunday-schools conducted by the people, and not by the clergy. They think that the best instruction for a religious life flows directly from the Bible, which God gave to guide men, and which He therefore supposed them able to understand. This the American people spread before the minds of the young, without note or comment, and in either version, that its teachings, instilled in earliest youth, may influence the life and conduct long ere the maturity of mind tends to theological speculations, and instruct and comfort thousands who may never comprehend a single sectarian theory.

But this free system can exist only where cultivated and pious mothers preside over the family. That is the purpose of this beneficent institution at whose celebration we have been this evening assisting, and these maidens are its flowers, woven by its hands into a crown worthy of the brow of Eve.

These maidens are the missionaries of the state.

Yes, it is to you, future mothers of the republic, that its destinies are committed. This high cultivation has been bestowed on you, not to promote vanity or frivolous dissipation, or the rivalries of social ambition, but to make you the lights and guides of the next generation in the paths of religious and civil prudence. You are not called to mingle in the turmoil of public life, nor to assist at the wrangling of synods, nor to flame in the front of war, but you are the sent to outwatch the stars for the safety of the life of the republic, the virtue and truth, the patriotism and devotion, the re

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ligion and morals of those to whom the destinies of the republic are committed the people who will constitute and rule it. Your life and station find their fittest symbol in that glorious path. which spans the arch of night, thick sown with blazing stars, but more beautiful still by the clouds of trembling light amid which they shine the blended beams of innumerable but invisible stars, deep hidden in the recesses of the heavens till explored by the great astronomers of modern times. It is not yours to glitter in the eye of the world as those leaders of the starry host which first arrest the gazer's eye, or guide the mariner on the deep; but, hidden within the heaven of your homes, invisible to every eye but those who penetrate there, the pathway of the republic will glow with your light, a visible halo from invisible stars, whose glory is not to be seen, but to wrap all things else in your light.

So, when in after ages the eye of the world shall marvel at the dazzling destinies of the republic culminating in splendor and triumph, let them be taught that it is not the glory of industry, or arts, or arms, but the light which the matrons of a nation shed around its path.

THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.

THE case of the slave-trader Wanderer, and the harangues of Messrs. Spratt, of South Carolina, Yancey, Ruffin, and other extremists in the South in favor of repealing the United States enactments against the slave-trade; the exhibition, at an agricultural fair in South Carolina, of an "imported laborer of African origin," to whose owner was awarded a silver prize; the serious discussions as to the necessities of the South for a class of "immigrants from Africa" suited to her climate and productions, and the boldly-declared doctrine of the "divinity" of slavery, and the rightfulness and Christian duty of its extension and increase, had begun to awaken the fears of even the least thoughtful.

In August, 1859, Mr. Davis wrote for a daily journal the following article on THE REOPENING OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.

Ir is time that the insidious advances toward this nefarious and unchristian traffic which a large and influential party are making should attract the attention of Maryland. Her people should not be taken unawares, as they were by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the same false pretexts. The preparation of men's minds for the grand end has already begun, either consciously or unconsciously.

The grand and humane policy of Maryland-the colonization scheme is insinuated to have failed. The ideas and sentiments from which it springs are said to have been shown false. Journals talk of the great revulsion of public opinion among the leading men of England on the question of emancipation, which has no existence out of their imaginations, to lend respectability to the change of men's opinions of the honesty, morality, humanity, and policy of the slave-trade, already begun, and which they wish to foster. While they do not venture to recommend the reopening of it, they suggest that it exists now, in fact, more than ever, though we are deprived of its benefits.

That the fleets of England and the United States do not prevent or suppress, but aggravate it. That interest which would be equal to humanity in securing good treatment to the candidates for civilization and heaven, is now expressed by terror, and

converted into cruelty by the fear of capture, the ignominy of exposure, the menace of punishment. It is plausibly argued that the removal of the cruisers would remove the terrors of the trader, and the captive, no longer a source of danger to the thief, would become an object of interest.

Good food, water, and air, all the delights of a pleasure voyage, would obliterate the ill renown of the "middle passage;" and, after a charming voyage of a few days or a week, the neophytes of Christianity would land on the celestial shores of the New World disenthralled from barbarism, and, under the training of Christian masters and ministers, learn at once the way to cultivate cotton and the Christian life. The question of morals is passed in silence. These ingenious gentlemen assume the existence of the trade, and their philanthropic purpose is to ameliorate the condition of the slaves.

In aid of this argumentation, others insist strenuously on the entire unfitness of the negro for freedom; for of course, if he is nowhere fit for freedom, he must be slave to somebody, and if any body's, why not ours, the Southern fire-eaters will in due time exclaim.

Of course, this view is expressed with great moderation, great candor, great independence-nay, philosophically, simply as an ethnological question; or piously, as an attempt to purchase the divine counsels touching the negro race, and to become the humble instrument of His will, which, of course, can be only good! His will is learned, not in the Bible, but in the British West Indies. The great English experiment of emancipation is loudly proclaimed a failure. The opinion of English statesmen is said to have changed. The very emancipationists are claimed as converts to the system they ignorantly overthrew. Statistics are paraded to corroborate the proof of failure, and adjective is piled on adjective to describe how, in the lowest deep of slavery, a lower deep of ignorance, idleness, worthlessness, was found in freedom by the English experiment.

If the writers draw no conclusion, every reader can draw it without much trouble. It is an ally to the argument of the universal unfitness of the negro for mere personal civil freedom any. where; that is, the mere exercise of the right in subordination to the laws of the land to dispose of his own labor, to enjoy the fruits of his own toil.

It is the exact course of reasoning which was heard in the late Slaveholder's Convention in Baltimore. The resolutions proposed to be adopted by the extreme men of that Convention were merely the formal expressions of the above reasoning, yet no such conclusions are hinted at, but the dissertations usually close with some general and edifying remarks about the inequality of the races, the absurdity of attempting to give negroes equal privileges with whites, about which nobody differs, and could have been deduced from much more accurate premises than those employed. But the mind of the reader is sent far beyond the conclusions of the writer.

If we turn our eyes southward, we shall get more light there. Men's opinions are more pronounced. It is now a political question. Large masses of the Democratic party openly avow themselves in favor of reopening the slave-trade, and greater multitudes sympathize with them, but prefer the safer course of insinuation and circumvention. They assume the Southern disguise which cheated the country into the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. They suggest, assert, maintain the unconstitutionality of the laws prohibiting the slave-trade. They do it under divers pretexts, but all end in one point. Some merely wish the laws repealed, not to reopen the trade, but to leave it to the several states to say whether they will allow it, just as Congress was to allow each Territory to decide on slavery for itself; others think the laws ought to be repealed because the penalty of death is too severe to be enforced against the innocent, mild, and moral captains and crews of the slavers; while others, more practical and more logical, say, if the laws be unconstitutional, there is no need of a repeal—they are nullities. Juries, grand and petit, may and must disregard them.

The courts have no power to enforce unconstitutional lawsnay, the courts are not even to decide the question of constitutionality; it is too plain for question; each juror must decide for himself. Grand juries must refuse to find indictments for slavetrading, though the facts be admitted; petit juries must acquit any one indicted by the usurpation of a grand jury. We have seen within the last year both grand and petit juries in Southern states disregard both evidence, and law, and court, and refuse to find indictments, or, where found, acquit the prisoner in the face of uncontradicted testimony of the officers of the navy making the