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Show 22 pulled up the Whig-weed pretty tho~·oughly .= they . h~ve torn it up by the roots, shaken the sOil from 1t, and 1t lies there partly drying and partly rotting, but, at any rate, pretty thoroughly dead. 'rhey laid hold of the Democrat-weed. That was a little too rank, and strongly rooted in the ground, for them to pull up. Nevertheless, they loosened its roots; they gave it a twist in the trunk; they broke off some branches, and stripped off some of its leaves, and it does not look quite so flourishing as it did several years ago. Now, this negative work is very important; for, if we could get both these kinds of weed out of the soil, it \vould not be a very difficult matter to sow the seed, and raise a harvest of antislavery. Next for the positive work. It calls out men who hitherto have never taken the initiative in politics, but have voted just as they were bid. I will speak of Massachusetts, of Boston. We had there a large class of excellent men, who always went, a week or two before the election, to the Whigs and Democrats, and said, "Whom are we to vote for?" The great Whigs said, ''We have not yet taken counsel of the Lord; we shall do so to-morrow, and then we will tell you." So these men went home, and bowed their knees, and waited in silent submission ; and the next day their masters said, " You are to vote for John Smith or John Brown," or whosoever it chanced to be. And the people said, "Hurrah for the great John Smith!" " Hurrah for the great John Brown!"-" Did you ever hear of him before?,, asked some one. "No: but he is the greatest man alive."-" Who told you so?"-" Oh! our masters told us so." Now, the Know Nothings went to that class of men, and said, " You have been fooled long enough."" So we have," said the people, " and no mistake ! and we will not bear it any longer." They would not be fooled any longer by the Whigs, and some of them no longer by 23 the Democrats; but they were fooled by the Know Nothings. Nevertheless, it was an important thing for this class of people to take the initiative in political matters. If they stumbled as they tried to go alone, it is what all children have done. "Up, and take another," is good advice. So the Know Nothings not only pulled up the Whig-weed, and left it to rot, but they stirred the land; they ploughed it deep with a subsoil plough, turning up a whole stratum of people which had never been brought up to the surface of the political garden before. That was another very important matter; and yet, allow me to say, with all this subsoiling, they have not turned up one single man who proves powerful in politics, and at the same time new. Mr. Wilson owes his place in the Senate to the Know Nothings : he was l{nown to be a powerful man before. Mr. Banks owes his place to this party: he also was a powerful man before. I do not find, anywhere in the United States, that the Americans have brought one single able man before the people who was not known to the people just as well before. You shall determine what that fact means. I shall not say just now. At the South, this party has done greater service than at the North; for, among the Non-Slaveholders at the South, there is a class of n1en with very little money, less education, and no social standing whatsoever. That class have been deprived of their political power by the rich, educated, and respectable slaveholders; for the slaveholders mah:e the laws, fill the offices, and monopolize all the government of the South. Those Poor-whites are nothing but the dogs of the slaveholder. Whenever he says, " Seize him, Dirteater!" away goes this whole pack of pro-slavery dogs, catching hold of whomsoever their masters set them upon. This class of men, having no money and no education, and no means of getting any, deprived of political influence, feft that they were crushed down; but they were too igno- |