continue to be faithfully observed by the two great sections of
the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding States, there could
be no rational cause for anxiety to either of them.

The duty which a just regard for the Constitution imposed
upon the South was, to refrain from efforts to increase its
national political power in the interests of servitude; for such
efforts could not be made without exciting angry opposition
in the North. The correlative duty that rested upon the
North was, to fulfil, exactly and literally, the stipulations by
which the Constitution always intended to guard the indi-
vidual rights of the master where the Constitution had recog-
nized those rights as lawfully existing, and to refrain from
all interference with a social relation which was under the ex-
clusive control of a local sovereignty, whose independence, in
this regard, was fully promised by the fundamental law of the
land.

But these duties, plain and imperative as they were, were
obscured to great numbers of people in the two sections, by
the influence which their several acts and exertions produced
upon each other.

It was easy for a Northern man to see that the slavehold-
ing States ought to be content with the guaranties of the Con-
stitution, and ought to refrain from seeking new defences for
slavery by increasing its political power; but the same man did
not see how his own denunciation of this peculiar social rela-
tion operated to lead the Southern people in quest of further
sectional power as a means of defending themselves against un-
warrantable interference. On the other hand, it was quite
natural for a Southern slaveholder to perceive, with great dis-
tinctness, that the Constitution had secured to him a personal
right of extradition of his fugitive slave, and to be indignant
at any failure to comply with this obligation; but he did not
see so clearly that, in insisting on extending the area of a social
relation, elsewhere regarded as odious and morally wrong, he
was only increasing a feeling at the North that found its ex-
pression in State laws which obstructed the exercise of his con-
stitutional right, and at the same time fomented a popular
spirit which practically denied its existence.

The relation of Mr. Webster to this whole subject cannot

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