On the 15th of November, 1854, Mr. Sumner delivered his admirable address before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston, on The Position and Duties of the Merchant; illustrated by the Life of Granville Sharp. This address was delivered in tones of feeling eloquence, and was listened to with much pleasure. It abounds in just, appropriate, and beautiful thoughts, set forth in choice language.

During the Congressional session of 1854-5, Mr. Sumner made another strenuous effort for human rights. It will be remembered that on the 23d of February, 1855, on motion of Mr. Toucey, of Connecticut, the Senate proceeded to the consideration of a "Bill to protect officers and other persons acting under the authority of the United States," by which it was provided that "Suits commenced or pending in any State Court against any officer of the United States or other person, for or on account of any act done under any law of the United States, or under color thereof, or for or on account of any right, authority, claim, or title, set up by such officer or other person, under any law of the United States," should be removed for trial to the Circuit Court of the United States. This afforded Mr. Sumner an excellent opportunity for pressing his proposition to repeal the Fugitive Slave Bill, and he immediately took the floor against Mr.

Toucey's Bill, and delivered his able speech, entitled The Demands of Freedom-Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Bill.

On the 9th of May, 1855, Mr. Sumner made an address before the people of New York, at the Metropolitan Theatre, On the Anti-Slavery Enterprise; its necessity, practicability, and dignity, with glimpses at the special duties of the North. This effort was a magnificent display of spirit-stirring eloquence, and called forth the highest encomiums.

The last great political speech of Mr. Sumner, at a popular meeting of freemen, was delivered on the evening of 2d November, 1855, in Faneuil Hall, Boston. His subject was The Slave Oligarchy and its Usurpations—the Outrages in Kansas-the different Political Parties-the Repub lican Party. In this speech we have facts which, at this moment, should be duly considered by every northern man who loves freedom. Of this class is the following passage:

"Fellow-citizens, I have said enough to stir you; but this humiliating tale is not yet finished. An Oligarchy seeking to maintain an outrage like Slavery, and drawing its inspirations from the fountain of wickedness, is naturally base, false, and heedless of justice. It is vain to expect that men, who have screwed themselves to become the pro

pagandists of this enormity, will be constrained by any compromise, compact, bargain, or plighted faith. As the less is contained in the greater, so there is no vileness of dishonesty, no denial of human rights, that is not plainly involved in the support of an enormity, which begins by changing man, created in the image of God, into a chattel, and sweeps little children away to the auctionblock. A power which Heaven never gave, can be maintained only by means which Heaven can never sanction. And this conclusion of reason is confirmed by late experience; and here I approach the special question under which the country now shakes from side to side. The protracted struggle of 1820, known as the Missouri question, ended with the admission of Missouri as a slaveholding State, and the prohibition of Slavery in all the remaining territory, west of the Mississippi and north of 36° 30'. Here was a solemn act of legislation, called at the time a compromise, a covenant, a compact, first brought forward by the Slave Oligarchy-vindicated by it in debatefinally sanctioned by its votes, also upheld at the time by a slave-holding President, James Monroe, and his cabinet-of whom a majority were slaveholders, including Mr. Calhoun himself—and made the condition of the admission of Missouri-without which that State could not have been received

into the Union. Suddenly, during the last yearwithout any notice in the public press or the prayer of a single petition-after an acquiescence of thirty three years, and the irreclaimable possession by the Slave Oligarchy of its special share in the provisions of this Compromise-in violation of every obligation of honor, compact, and good neighborhood-and in contemptuous disregard of the out-gushing sentiments of an aroused North, this time-honored Prohibition, in itself a Landmark of Freedom, was overturned, and the vast region, now known as Kansas and Nebraska, was opened to Slavery; and this was done under the disgraceful lead of Northern politicians, and with the undisguised complicity of a Northern President, forgetful of Freedom, forgetful also of his reiterated pledges, that during his administration the repose of the country should receive no shock.

"And all this was perpetrated under pretences of popular rights. Freedom was betrayed by a kiss. In defiance of an uninterrupted prescription down to our day-early sustained at the South as well as the North-leaning at once on Jefferson and Washington-sanctioned by all the authoritative names of our history, and beginning with the great Ordinance by which Slavery was prohibited in the Northwest-it was pretended that the people of the United States, who are the proprietors

of the national domain, and who, according to the Constitution, may make all needful rules and regulations' for its government, nevertheless were not its sovereigns-that they had no power to interdict Slavery there; but that this eminent dominion resided in the few settlers, called squatters, whom chance, or a desire to better their fortunes, first hurried into these places. To this precarious handful, sprinkled over immense spaces, it was left, without any constraint from Congress, to decide, whether into these vast, unsettled lands, as into the veins of an infant, should be poured the festering poison of Slavery, destined, as time advances, to show itself in cancers and leprous disease, or whether they should be filled with all the glowing life of Freedom. And this great power, transferred from Congress to these few settlers, was hailed by the new-fangled name of Squatter Sovereignty.

"It was fit that the original outrage perpetrated under such pretences, should be followed by other outrages perpetrated in defiance of these pretences. In the race of emigration, the freedom-loving freemen of the North promised to obtain the ascendency, and in the exercise of the conceded sovereignty of the settlers, to prohibit Slavery. The Slave Oligarchy was aroused to other efforts. Of course it stuck at nothing. On the day of election