The Liberator

From the Essex County Washingtonian.

Cassius M. Clay

Mr. Clay's lecture before the Whigs on Monday night was ultra Whig to the core. There wasn't a spice of anti-slavery in it from beginning to the end. He ridiculed the idea that man-stealing was any disqualification for the presidency, and quoted a Methodist priest by the name of Bascom, to prove that Henry Clay's character was as good as anybody's 'outside the church!' He said that it was not only the law of Nature that birds and fishes should prey upon each other, but that men should do likewise—and in this way he explained the fact, that wherever his favorite tariff scheme had had full play, poverty and famine had invariably ensued. He said that Mr. Clay was in favor of emancipation in the grain-growing States, but opposed to it, whether gradual or immediate, in the planting States, BECAUSE IN THE LATTER THE WHITES AND BLACKS COULDN'T LIVE IN AMITY, UNLESS IN THE AMICABLE RELATION OF MASTER AND SLAVE!! He also made the profound remark that, as there were more people on the globe than it could feed, it was a part of their inscrutable destiny that some of them should live at the others' expense! (Consoling to the laborers, very!)

He was opposed to inquiring into the moral character of political candidates, because God had said in the holy Bible that there is none perfect!! Mixed in with these and many other foolish remarks, were some trite moral reflections which seemed nobler than usual from their contrast to the rest of the lecture.

I confess myself to have been grievously disappointed. I expected to hear as able a lecture as the orator's awkward position would admit of—but I must say, that a more lame, grovelling, superficial and dishonest address, can never have disgraced human lips. It was a gross insult to his audience, and I was rejoiced to see that, excepting a few rhetorical flourishes, it was received with a most appropriate coldness.