thumbed and fingered, the flute artists readily made themselves masters of the improved instrument for the sake of its extended scales. And this must ever be the rule of progress, that the skill of artists must rise to all attainable improvements in the music of instruments.

Beside this difficulty attending the new instrument, it is true, also, that with an instrument of the same dimensions on the old plan and on the new, the new is reduced in respect to the capacity for introducing stops. That is; the same extent of windchest, if occupied with 36 pipes to an octave on every stop, can not accommodate as many stops, as if occupied with only 12 pipes to an octave. This is precisely the difference. The question then is simply as to the comparative value of interweaving stops only of harmony, or stops only that are discordant? By the increased ratio of expense, you may have an equal number of stops in each: is the difference too much to pay for the purity of all the scales and the sweet and perfect harmony that forever results? Remember, too, that in the new plan, every stop adds its voice in concert with sweet harmony; while on the old plan, every stop added, but increases the noise of discord. In one region purity ever reigns: in the other, never ceasing discord is present. Which is most valuable in the songs of the sanctuary?

It may be said again, that the complication of mechanism and increase of pipes belonging to the new plan, will require more outlays in keeping both in working order: that we must call in more often, the services of the repairer and the tuner. As to the mechanism, we see not why it will not abide, without repair, as long as that of the old plan: such is its simplicity, strength, ease of action, noiselessness. As to tuning, the new plan presents an easier and surer field for the tuner to fix his pipes aright in every scale, than belongs to the old plan; and the pipes themselves are as sure at least, to retain their pitch on the new plan as the other. And surely it is more easy to endure slight variations from the perfect, than, beginning with the imperfect, to wander into more intolerable discord.

These are the only matters of weight that come into the comparison of the plans, to affect a choice between them and in our view, they leave the whole question to turn simply on the difference of the music produced; between perfect intonation and har

and imperfection in both: on which question, no ear, on trial, can fail to crave and demand the perfect.

If in advocating the new plan and condemning the old, any think that it is a musical heresy to depart from the time-venerated organ employed hitherto in the church, we will reply, in the words of another, with which we close our article: "The whole gothicism of temperament may be suspected to have come in with monks and organs: which is not saying that organs should

be abolished, but that they should be made to play in tune in such variety of keys as may be found consistent with practical convenience, and that this is of vastly more importance than being adorned with all the trumpet and hautboy stops that can be found in Haarlem. Humanity dearly loves being in tune: and the first sectarian chapel owner who shall have the spirit to build an Enharmonic organ at half the expense of one with the ordinary number of useless stops, will find his account in it in the extension of his heresy."*

ART. IX.-THE QUESTION! ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?

Speech of the HON. HENRY CLAY, of Kentucky, on taking up his compromise resolutions on the subject of slavery. Delivered in Senate, Feb. 5th and 6th, 1850. New York: Stringer & Townsend. 1850.

Speeches of HON. JOHN C. CALHOUN and HON. DANIEL WEBSTER, on the subject of slavery. Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March, 1850. New York: Stringer &

Townsend.

Speeches of HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD and HON. LEWIS Cass, on the subject of slavery. Delivered, &c. New York: Stringer & Townsend.

WE have read these speeches with deep interest; and now, with an occasional reference to them and perhaps to some others, we propose to make a shorter one ourselves. Until recently, the question which agitated the minds of the people of this country respecting slavery, was simply whether this system, on the soil it already occupies, should or should not be abolished. The struggle on the part of its advocates was, to preserve and uphold it where it already exists; while the mass of the people in the free States were generally convinced that it ought, in the moral aspect of the question, to be abolished even on the soil it now holds as its own. It is indeed universally admitted among us that slavery in the states can, legally, be abolished only by the states themselves; and yet there are, in the North and in the West, but few we suppose, who do not rank themselves against slavery, and but few who would not rejoice to see it abolished in the District of Columbia by the action of the federal government.

* Westminster Review, April, 1832, page 453.

As we just now said, the position which men have held in respect to slavery, has been simply a position on the one side or the other of this question of "abolition." The question whether it should or should not be abolished, is not the main question now. A question, at this moment infinitely more important than that, has arisen and is soon to be decided. We fear indeed that the question may be put and carried, against God, and humanity too, before even these pages may be read, and indeed before we have laid down our pen.

What is the question? The question is whether this government, besides consenting not to hasten the death of slavery where it has its being, shall extend and perpetuate it, in order to maintain an equilibrium, an everlasting equilibrium of power between slave representation and free, on the floor of Congress; whether, for every newly admitted state in which men are permitted to have a system of government based on the principles of our declaration of Independence, another state must be given up to slavery. That is the question.

It is not, we think, so much a question in issue between political parties in the free states, as it is a question between a few hundred thousand slaveholders on the one hand, and the great body of freemen in the Northern and Western states, and no small body too, in the Southern states. It is a naked question between liberty and slavery, light and darkness, and as we hope to make it appear, between right and wrong. Shall slavery then be extended over any territory now free? Shall we enlarge its scope? Shall we give this vast pyramid of oppression a broader base to rest upon? Shall we infuse new life into a system which we had begun to hope, might at some distant day dissolve and disappear before "the law and the prophets?" Nay, that is not the question-whether we are willing to do this-but it is, must we do it? What is the language we hear in the citadel of the Union? They tell us this government shall use its authority to extend slavery and thus maintain if possible an equilibrium here between liberty and slavery, or (have mercy on us!) the Union shall be dissolved! Surely, if there was ever need of special prayer to the God of heaven, we need it now. And what shall be our prayer?-that God may interpose and save us from the calamity which these men threaten?—that he will, by all means, preserve the Union, whatever sacrifice of principle on our part may be needed to preserve it? Shall we with an ungodly and unmanly timidity pray that the Union may be preserved by sacrificing "the law and the prophets?" We will offer no such prayer. We see no terror in such menaces, and if we did, we would pray first for the preservation of the law and the prophets, and secondly for the Union. We will pray that the representatives of our own and of every other free state may, in

this time of their peculiar temptation, have manliness enough, conscience enough, to resist a demand so monstrous and stand true-to the North? No! to humanity and to God. If thus the Union may be preserved, may God preserve it! for we dread its dismemberment.

But will these advocates of slavery dissolve this government unless it consent to cherish slavery as sacredly as it cherishes freedom, and to use its power to perpetuate the bondage of the future generations of three millions of people? Will they tear down this structure unless we will consent that it shall be forever a heterogeneous and effervescing mass of liberty and oppression? Let them be assured that God himself, if we undertake to build up and hold up such a structure as they demand, will ere long take this Union into his own hands and dissolve it in fiery indignation without any special aid from them or us.

But let us come back to the question. Why can we not for the sake of peace and the Union yield to this new demand of slavery? In answering this question we shall speak neither for nor against any political party in the free states, but for men in every state and of every complexion. Why can we not consent to do this thing? Giants in intellect, men whose names have been known and honored here and throughout the world and who have spent their lives for the most part gloriously in our national councils, tell us that they "suppose there is to be found no injunction against" slaveholding "in the teachings by the Gospel of Christ or by any of his apostles." And others are not wanting who affirm even that the Bible sanctions and sanctifies the system. If this system be not against the Gospel, if the Gospel, the law and the prophets are not against it, why then, for the sake of peace we may perhaps consent to extend and perpetuate it. But have ye never read, Senators, that great and comprehensive declaration made by Jesus Christ, in which he condensed into one simple and brief injunction, the very sum and substance of the whole of God's revealed will in respect to the duties of the second table of the law? Hear it! Would to heaven it might be taken up by the millions of freemen in this broad land, and by three millions of bondmen, and uttered in a voice that might shake the foundations of the capitol, and reverberate in the dome of the senate chamber like the roaring of many waters! 66 ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER YE WOULD THAT MEN SHOULD DO TO YOU, DO YE EVEN SO TO THEM. FOR THIS IS THE LAW!" This is God's law, revised, condensed and republished by his own Son. This is the constitution of the united states and tribes of mankind!

But how does it appear that this is an injunction against slavery, and what application has this principle to the great question before us. Let us see. It is demanded that this government

shall use its authority and influence to extend the territory of slavery and thus extend slave representation on the floor of Congress, so that an "equilibrium" may thus be maintained if possible to the end of time, between the slave interest and the interest of the free. The object is confessedly to put new life and power into this waning, dying system of oppression.

What now is this slavery which we are called upon, not in the most courteous terms, to increase and perpetuate? Let us measure it by that great precept of Jesus Christ which he affirms to be "the law and the prophets." Without spending a moment in describing the multiplied enormities which slavery always carries with it, without describing any of those atrocities which must needs be occurring every day, here and there, on the soil of slavery, and which are almost enough to provoke an armed interference on the part of all the friends of humanity in creation, let us simply, in the coolest manner possible, try slavery in its naked abstract form, by the precept of Jesus Christ. To do this we need only to make a simple supposition. Let us suppose that those who hold slaves now, were themselves slaves, and that all the white men in the Union, with their sons and daughters, were in a state of bondage, and that the African race, or any other, held the supremacy over us. Suppose that our children at their birth became the absolute property of our masters. And suppose that our masters should come into the capitol and coolly propose, nay, demand, that the government shall give them more slave territory, that our market value might be increased, and that our children and our children's children to untold generations might be cut off from all hope of freedom-and this, to maintain an "equilibrium" between liberty and slavery in Congress. What should we, in slavery ourselves, think of the men who should make such a demand, or who should vote in compliance with it? Should we coolly suppose that the law and the prophets contained nothing contrary to such a measure? Should we be apt to suppose that Jesus Christ and his apostles were tacitly on the side of our masters in such a course? "All things, then, whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." And what would you that these men should do to you, if they were masters and you their slaves? Would you have them extend and perpetuate slavery for you and your children? Or would you resist a demand so atrocious while breath should last? Then do ye, Senators and Representatives, even so to them. To do otherwise is one of the grossest violations of the law and the prophets; one of the most monstrous iniquities that can be framed by law.

But hold! we are mistaken; the argument is unsound, for Christ only says, "whatsoever ye would that MEN should do to you, do ye even so to them :" and slaves are not recognized as