Vermont Telegraph

From the Human Rights.

TEXAS.

Let us glance at some of the probable effects of the annexation of Texas to the Union.

1. Slavery would receive a new impetus. Opening that fertile country to the slave speculators, would give new vigor to the system in the old dilapidated slaveholding States. They would then become, more emphatically, slave-growing States: the Congos and Guineas of the Texan slave-traders. The incubus of slavery, now crushing their energy and prosperity, and operating as a motive to emancipation by making the system intolerable, would then be rolled off upon Texas, and they would be enabled to endure the otherwise insupportable load. Texas, with its youthful elasticity, the salubrity of its climate, and the fertility of its soil, could long sustain the weight without sinking. Of course it would be for the advancement of the slaveholding interest, and legitimately carrying out the end for which Texas was introduced into the Union, (viz: the propping up of slavery,) that it should rapidly increase in population. To this object, the energy of the South would be devoted. Planters would emigrate thither with their slaves: speculators would pour in from abroad. Government would encourage emigration by giving land to settlers: the internal slave-trade would be driven with dreadful energy: thousands of victims would be smuggled in from Africa direct, and by the way of Cuba, and Texas would soon become a populous and powerful territory.

2. Then the North might find that she had aroused from her slumbers too late, and that the precipice was crumbling all around her. She would then learn the true secret of all this feverish anxiety to establish liberty in Texas! By the introduction of new slave States into the Union from this territory, THE SLAVE-HOLDING INTEREST WOULD HAVE A PREDOMINANT POWER IN THE NATIONAL councils, and the extension and perpetuation of the system would become the cardinal policy of the general government. It should be remembered that the object of the South in bringing Texas into the Union, is to strengthen slavery. This has not been disguised from the earliest moment to the present hour. The spirit of liberty, rising in its majesty, in this country, to strike down this bloody system, has alarmed them. They are casting about in frenzy for a shelter. They would retreat back upon Texas, and there rally their dismayed forces.

The acquisition of Texas, will, in process of time, enable them to put down every effort which northern citizens may make for the abolition of slavery. Discussion, by the press and by the voice, may then be awed into subserviency, or crushed into silence, not merely by Lynch law, but by Statute law. The right of petition, of assemblage, and of organization in Anti-Slavery Societies, may then be destroyed, not merely by the lawless assaults of mobs—not by dragging John Quincy Adams from the floor of Congress—not by indictments at common law, of doubtful constitutionality, but by laws formally enacted, and executed by the iron arm of military power. Northern citizens may then be punished by imprisonment, by scourgings, and hangings, for the utterance of the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence—not alone by Lynch law in Washington, Nashville, Vicksburgh, and Savannah, but by Statute Laws in Philadelphia, New York, Hartford, and Boston. The public mail need not then be plundered of the writings of Franklin, and Jefferson, and Jay, in defiance of law, by mobs of gentlemanly anarchists at Charleston, but he who dares to deposit a newspaper or a letter in the Post Office at New-York, containing a sentiment hostile to the Divine right of slaveholding, may be imprisoned, or burnt at the stake by the High Sheriff, according to the statute in such case made and provided! Northern citizens may then not only be indicted at the South for declaring that "God commands, and all nature cries out, that man should not be held as property," but the Governors of the North may be compelled by law, to surrender up such felons to the tender mercies of slaveholding judges and juries, to expiate their crimes upon the gallows. Do you tell us, these laws would be unconstitutional? THE SOUTH WOULD THEN BE ABLE TO ALTER THE CONSTITUTION TO THEIR WISHES; and would they lack the inclination?

Nay, verily! Give them the power, and they would, to perpetuate this system, instantly erase from the Constitution all the provisions by which freedom of speech, of the press, of petition, of assemblage, of organization, and of locomotion, are guaranteed. They would forbid, by express provisions and high penalties, all anti-slavery discussions, publications, petitions, meetings, and societies. He who doubts it, has superficially studied the signs of the times, and has yet to learn the genius of slavery. The supremacy, the omnipotence of this system, is the deliberate determination of its abettors. They avow, before the world, that they will wade in blood, to secure their peculiar institutions from assault. Will they falter?

"They've set their life upon a cast,
And they'll stand the hazard of the die!"

The following resolution, introduced into the Virginia Legislature, by Mr. May, at its last session, shows what we may expect from the South, when they get the power to do as they please. We give only an extract.

"Resolved by the General Assembly of Virginia, That the following article be proposed to the several States of the Union, and to Congress, as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

Congress shall have power, and they are hereby required to pass such laws as may be found necessary:

1st. To prevent and to punish the formation of any society, association, or assemblage of persons, in any state or territory, for the purpose of effecting the abolition of slavery in any other state or territory of this Union.

2d. To prevent and to punish any attempt or act, made or done by writing, printing, or otherwise, in any state or territory, with intent to excite slaves in any other state or territory of the Union, to insurrection or rebellion against the proprietors thereof, or against the laws and government of such state or territory.

3d. To prevent the transmission by mail, or the delivery from Post Offices, of any newspaper, or other printed paper, which may tend to excite servile insurrection or rebellion in any state or territory; and which, by the laws thereof, it may be declared penal to publish or circulate."

We are not left to conjecture what doctrines would be regarded by the South as insurrectionary. R. G. Williams was indicted in Alabama for an attempt to excite the slaves to insurrection, for publishing in the Emancipator the sentiment, "God commands, and all nature cries out, that man should not be held as property." Insurrectionary, indeed!

These were put forth as a feeler, to test the tone of public sentiment, and see whether it would bear an alteration of the Constitution.

Mr. Calhoun's Bill, by which publications and letters, "touching the subject of slavery," were to be excluded from the mails, by northern Post Masters, was another feeler. It did not pass, and simply, because the slaveholding interest was not strong enough. The annexation of Texas would speedily remove this difficulty. May we not believe, that the South lacks only the power (not the inclination) to make these encroachments?

3. If these anticipated results should not be realized to their full extent, still the annexation of Texas, would, by increasing the power of the South in our National Legislature, and especially in the Senate, enable them to carry every question against the North, and destroy, as far as it is in the power of legislation to do it, their prosperity, by crippling their commerce, their agriculture, and their manufactures. Give them the power, and the compensated labor of the North must succumb to the coerced labor of the South. They would swing the whip unsparingly over the backs of northern laborers. To make their slave labor reputable, and as profitable as any labor in the country, they would reduce our industrious yeomanry and mechanics to the level of working beasts. Leigh, Pickens, Preston, Calhoun, and other friends to the annexation of Texas, have proclaimed the doctrine, that the capitalist ought to hold in vassalage his laborers. Will the free and intelligent mechanics of New-England, and the unbought farmers of New-York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, bid God speed to the doctrine, and ensure its success, by beckoning Texas into our Union? Our industry will be crushed, and all the well springs of our prosperity dried up, and our most cherished rights bartered for the privilege of chaining Texas, with its load of eternal slavery, to the sinking fortunes of the Republic!

4. The Re-Establishment of slavery at the North, Might follow this event. Slavery is now permitted for a limited time, in several of the free states, by express statutes! We instance New-York, Ohio, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Recent efforts for its entire abolition, in some of these states, have been signally unsuccessful. There has been much legislation, and much popular action at the North, during the last two years, against liberty, and but little in its favor. Slavery in the "abstract" is loudly denounced—but slavery in practice has warm admirers, and staunch defenders. Open kidnapping, in northern cities, excites little abhorrence. Northern aristocratic capitalists and employers declare that the slaves of the South are better off than northern laborers. There are multitudes of humane men at the North, who would gladly better the condition of our laborers! Some months since, Mr. Wise threatened, on the floor of Congress, that if we did not cease our efforts for the abolition of slavery at the South, it should yet be introduced into the heart of the North. The calmness with which this audacious threat was received by northern members, shewed that when southern slavery sits in the high seats of national power, with its menaces and its bribes, it may set its foot upon the soil of the North, and here crack its whips, and clank its chains, and sell its victims. Beware of strengthening its arm! Slavery was once abolished in Texas. It is now firmly re-established there. Let the North take warning!

5. Increase the slaveholders' power in the nation, by giving them Texas, and they may re-establish the foreign slave-trade. Start not at this! It is hypocrisy run mad and stark naked, to whine about the horrors of foreign slave-trade, while we sanctify the internal slave-trade, with its unsurpassed atrocities, and sell women by the pound. Mr. Calhoun, in Congress, expressed his regrets, that the foreign slave trade had been branded Piracy! A citizen of Newport, R. I., has recently declared, that that city would never flourish till the slave trade was revived. The new senators and representatives which Texas would place on the floor of Congress, the cast-off spawn of slaveholding fecundity, the Houstons, and Potters, and Robinsons, desperadoes in the service of robbery and bloodshed, would they hesitate to receive that traffic, if it would enrich their coffers, and give energy to their darling system? If we are told, that the scorn of the world would be precipitated upon us, we would reply, that we are the hissing and reproach of civilized nations now, and there is little danger of sinking lower in the good opinion of the world, by adding to our system of Christian slavery, and republican Lynch law, the foreign slave trade. What will Robinson, and Potter, and their abettors, care for the opinions of good men? All others will cheer them on.

6. Texas annexed to the Union, and the South may then violate with impunity the celebrated Missouri compromise by which no new state was to be admitted into the Union, North of the 36° 30' of N. Latitude, whose constitution sanctioned slavery. The entire north-western domain, spreading beyond the Rocky Mountains, may be cursed with slavery, and in due time, admitted into the Union, by sections, to join in the crusade against the free states. To restrain slavery in its mad rush after power, by this compromise, would be to dam up Niagara with moonshine.

7. An immediate result of this alliance, in all probability, would be a war with Mexico. That power is now forcibly resisting the independence of Texas. She well knows, that if we are permitted to take peaceable possession of it, this will be one excuse for seizing all the states adjacent to it, on the West and South. Great Britain, too, would look on, not an uninterested spectator. She is jealous of our Texan movement. A war with her is not impossible. The Indian tribes might seize this opportunity to glut their smothered vengeance. The republics of the South, alarmed at their proud sister's encroachments, might mingle in the strife. To enjoy the company of the licentious and bloody Texan insurrectionists, are we ready to expend our treasure and our lives, in a struggle to re-establish slavery on a soil where it has been abolished? Are republicans and Christians eager for the fray?

8. To all this should be added the admonitory fact, that the conquest of Texas, the recognition of its independence, and its incorporation into the Union, is only the first step in a series of conquests. The states of Coahuila and Santa Fe, will be the next victims of our rapacity. Soon, if a righteous God does not blast us by his vengeance, the entire republic of Mexico will be swallowed up in the vortex of our ambition. Cuba will be the next halting post in our insane career of universal dominion. "OBSTA PRINCIPIIS!" Oppose Beginnings! Resist the first step. Texas annexed, the Rubicon is passed, and the days of the Republic are numbered!

The deed consummated, WHAT WILL THE NORTH THEN DO? There is but one alternative. We must submit, and become slaves, or resist. Shall we submit? We WILL RESIST, say the free citizens of the North. How—by physical force? God forbid! Yet that dread event may come. Our opponents should remember that the citizens of the North have not all adopted the principles of non-resistance. The abolitionists alone have consented to be mobbed and outraged in all their rights, without resorting to force. We fear, if the event we have anticipated should happen, that the blood of the North would be poured out like water, in defence of their liberties. Let us be understood. We should not rejoice in such a result. We should deprecate it. We should oppose all resort to physical means of defence—but, we merely prophecy as to what would probably happen. May God avert the day!

Others might propose a DISSOLUTION of THE Union, as the remedy. They would say, before we will submit to see our Constitution mutilated, and our liberties prostrated, we will separate from the South. Here, again, let us be distinctly understood. We do not propose a dissolution of the Union. Nay, verily! But we venture to assert, that should Texas be annexed to the Union, thousands among us, uncompromisingly hostile to abolitionists, would raise the cry of "Dissolution!" "Dissolution!" Already has the threat been made far and wide. We shall not stop here to demonstrate, that a dissolution of the Union would ruin the South, nor to inquire if it be safe for the North ever to leap into the chasm. We PROPOSE A BETTER REMEDY. It is to avoid entirely the rock on which the Union may split. It is to rally now, while we may, and by political and moral power, KEEP TEXAS out of The Union. How? Let publications containing facts, arguments, and appeals, be widely circulated. Let meetings of the people be called in every town in the free States, and the truth spread before them. Let ministers preach, and orators plead, and Christians pray. Especially, let petitions remonstrating against this measure be immediately circulated and universally signed by all ranks, and parties, and sects. Let no pains be spared to give such petitions a thorough and unprecedented circulation. Leave not a person unvisited. They should be signed by individuals without regard to their views of abolitionism. It should be a movement of THE PEOPLE. We trust this point will be emphatically urged. Dark as the prospect is, it is not yet too late. At large meetings in New-York, Massachusetts, New-Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, and other states, strong resolutions have been passed against the annexation, and recommending the circulation of Anti-Texan petitions to Congress and the State Legislatures. Our cause will have able advocates in all these bodies. Especially should our State Legislatures be flooded with petitions, praying them to remonstrate against this suicidal alliance, and to instruct their senators and request their representatives in Congress, to reject the proposal with promptness. Don't fear excitement. The crisis has come. Let the land rock with agitation. Better have excitement than civil war, and agitation than ruin. The signs are encouraging. Many prominent men, and leading presses of all parties, have raised the Anti-Texan standard. Let them be sustained by a universal rally on the part of THE PEOPLE. THE PEOPLE, THE WHOLE PEOPLE, should rise as one man, and put down this attempt to destroy the Republic.

Texas.—The New-England Anti-Slavery Society, which lately met at Boston, passed a resolution against the admission of Texas into the Union. We would be much gratified to see the same resolution passed in every meeting of citizens in the Union, for whatever purpose assembled. If this were done, our young men would cease to flock to that devoted country, to become the dupes of heartless speculators in land and human life. Let those already in Texas be once convinced that they can expect no protection from the Union, and they will gladly come back. We have always regarded this Texan business as iniquitous, and the countenance which it received from a portion of our citizens as disgraceful to the country. It was the work of a few land speculators in New-York and the South, and the effects of success would be, first, a most active and abominable African slave trade, and secondly, a dissolution of the Union. It has nearly involved us in a war with Mexico. But the end is probably near. The ensuing session will probably see Texas under the dominion of Mexico.—Public Ledger.