12



of decay, and finally relapse into the moral and
intellectual death of barbarism. Slavery blights
everything it touches. It breathes its pestilen-
tial breath on mind and morals, and they become
languid and dull-its influences pass over the
verdure of the fields, and it droops and decays.
It palsies the hand of industry, hermetically seals
up the riches of the earth, dries up the sources
of wealth, robs the land of its beauty, enervates
mlind, and extinguishes the rays of light and
knowledge which the past has bequeathed to the
present as the most priceless of its legacies.
  To talk of prosperity in the presence of such
a terrible evil, is to talk demonstrated absurdity.
No slave State is prosperous. There are no
affinities between slavery and prosperity. They
cannot live together. Wedlock between them
is impossible, for nature forbids the banns.
  But it is said the present time is unpropi-
tious to the discussion of plansof emancipation,
and that there are so many other subjects of
constitutional reform before the people that
they cannot give the requisite attention to
slavery. Now, as emancipation contemplates
a reform infinitely more important than any
and all others that have been suggested, it is ut-
terly unwise to postpone it that matters of less
moment may be looked into. Moreover, we
feel assured that by far more attention has been
given to the question of emancipation in the
State than to any other question that has been
proposed, and the people are as ready to vote
intelligently in regard to it as to any other re-
form .
  We are told that we ought to wait a little
longer. We have waited too long already, and
the longer we wait the greater the evil becomes.
It is becoming more unmanageable every day.
Slavery has always been insisting that people
ought to wait a little longer. The cry is per-
fectly characteristic of the system. With
the sluggard spoken of by the wisest of the
Jewish monarchs, it is in favor of "a little more
sleep, a little more lumber, a little more fold-
ing of the hands together." It never was and
never will be ready for any sort of activity. It
always favors the policy of masterly inactivity
In 1792, the qnestion of emancipation was agi-
tated, but postponed to a more convenient sea-
son. In 1798, it was again agitated and again
postponed. Since that period, half a century
has gone by and the system is not belter pre-
pared to be tried before the people than it was
at that time. The truth is, what the pro-slavery
men call the proper time will never arrive. It
will never overtake us, we must overtake it.
      REUBEN DAWSON,
      JAMES SPEED,
      WILLIAM E. GLOVER,



  The friends of emancipation owe it to their
cause and to their State to be vigilant. The
advocates of slavery intend, If they have the
power in the Convention, to throw restrictions
around emancipation and to fasten the system
of slavery forever on the State. In order to
counteract the designs of the pro-slavery men'
and to keep our beloved Commonwealth from
decrepitude and premature decay, it is Incum-
bent on the friends of emancipation to be ac-
tive and energetic. They have a wily foe to
contend with, a foe that relies for success on
wealth and the influence it gives, instead of
reason and common sense. The pro-slavery
men are striving to produce the opinion that
the question of emancipation is to be aban-
doned. They have undertaken to kill it off by
legislative resolutions-to resolve it into chaos
They have arrogantly commanded the public
inild to keep silence in regard to the greatest
question of the age. Aris', fellow citizens, be-
fore it is too late, and assert your right as free-
men to think and to speak your honest thoughts
at all times and in all places with all the force
that belongs to you. Will you keep silent,as
commanded Will you hush your thoughts
as ordered Will you shackle your tongues,
for fear they may use too large a charter and
speak words that haughty and purse-proud
arien have dared to denounce as treasonable-
,Trample upon all such restrictions on your
rights; such impertinent interference with your
Heaven-derived privileges ! If you are ready
to wear the livery of your would-be masters-
if slavery has infected your souls and made
them servile-if its contamination has enner-
vated your hearts-if you too are slaves, then
bow submissively to the arrogance of those who
presume to command your obedience, and pass
your wretched and degraded necks into the
yoke prepared for you.
  We earnestly call on you, fellow citizens, to
meet us in Convention, at Frankfort, on
Wednesday, the 25th day of April next; then
and there to take into consideration the whole
subject of slavery and to decide on what is
right and proper to be done after a full and in-
telligent survey of the exigencies of the times.
We call upon you to hold meetings in your
different counties and to appoint numerous del-
egites to the proposed Convention. That Con-
vention ought to be very large and attended by
the most distinguished and capable friends of
the cause in the State. It will depend on you,
friends of emancipation in Kentucky, to de-
cide on the size and character of that Conven-
tion, whether it shall be iniigniflcant in num-
bers or majestic in its strength, weak in its
effectsor as influential as any other assemblage
that our State has ever seen.

      WM. P. BOON,
      BLAND BALLARD.