ing unexpended. This state of things was occasioned by the late period of the session at which the appropriation of that year was made, and by the late commencement of the work in the summer of 1834. This unexpended balance in Indiana was upwards of eighty thousand dollars, which, with the one hundred thousand dollars granted last year, was expended before the working season had ended, and the stone which had been prepared for the bed of the road, and which would have preserved it from injury wherever applied, could not be spread over it for want of funds. Should the motion prevail, it will be ominous to the speedy completion of the road. The largeness of the appropriation. -Mr. President, if the Senate will permit me, (said Mr. H.,) I will turn to the appropriation of 1819 for this road east of Wheeling. Then, on a road of 130 miles in extent, and much of it finished, $535,000 was appropriated, at a time, too, when we had a war debt upon us of about one hundred and fifty millions, and a large sum of this bearing an interest of seven per cent. Now, the line of this road under actual construction exceeds 350 miles. We have a surplus of about thirty millions in the treasury, and yet it is proposed to diminish the appropriation contained in this bill. He hoped it would not be done, and that the Senator from Kentucky would yet withdraw his opposition, and lend us, as heretofore, his efficient helping hand. [SENATE. Sir, (said Mr. H.,) this road is the favorite measure of the States northwest of the river Ohio. If no appropriations are to be made to this road, and no distribution of the surplus revenue among the States, the interests of these States in the present session will be small and trifling indeed. The beneficent hand of the federal Government will not there be felt. Yes, sir, the great West, the new States, that have borne the burden and heat of the day, that have paid you millions into the treasury-fourteen millions last year, and will probably pay twenty or thirty millions during the present year, from the public lands-will be entirely overlooked. I make these statements (said Mr. H.) on good and sufficient data. The sales in Indiana during the month of January last amounted to $300,000, or thereabouts; and in the State of Indiana alone, it is a reasonable calculation that you will receive more than $3,000,000 the present year. And are all these millions to be withdrawn from the interior, and expended on the seaboard? I too am for the military and naval defences of the country, but I shall give no vote here that will lose sight of my own section of the Union. This road, Mr. President, was intended, originally, to subserve the interests of the treasury of the United States, as well as those of the West. And has it disappointed the expectations of its friends in either respect? Compare the amounts expended on it with the millions Mr. H. said that he placed this bill, distinctly and em- it has aided in bringing into the treasury, and it will be phatically, on the ground of solemn compact with the extremely difficult to strike the balance against the road. federal Government, and on the ground of the CumberIt would be wrong, Mr. President, to ascribe the prosland road having been recognised as a settled public perity of the Northwestern States to any single cause, work, begun and to be finished by this Government. but it would be equally erroneous to deny that this road He said that this road was based on compacts of the Govhad largely contributed to that prosperity. The truth ernment with all the new States northwest of the Ohio is, that every dollar heretofore appropriated to the imand west of the Mississippi rivers. These compacts had provement of the country northwest of the Ohio river has their origin in the policy of settling the Western coun- returned into your treasury amounts more than double. try, and of uniting that country in interest and affection The grant of land to the Wabash and Erie canal looks with the Eastern States. They were based on the con- large on paper, and so it is in reality; and often do we sideration that the new States with whom they were hear of it on this floor. In every proposition for grants made should for ever abandon their right of taxing in the to the new States, this road, and that grant, with the hands of purchasers the lands sold by Congress, for five grant to Illinois, and some others, are continually years next ensuing the date of sale; a right clear and brought in review before us. And has not the Wabash indisputable, and acknowledged by Congress, in asking and Erie canal grant been the means of selling millions for the compact by which it should be abandoned. of acres, which, but for that grant, would to this day These compacts set apart a portion of the moneys rehave remained unsold? And has it not sold lands in its ceived from the sales of the public lands, to be expend- vicinity for ten dollars an acre, which would otherwise ed, under the direction of Congress, in making roads have remained unsold to this day, or, if sold at all, would leading to the new States; and this road was commenced have sold at $1 25 per acre? Sir, (said Mr. H.,) I well in 1806, during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, in remember telling the Senate, when that proposition was fulfilment of the then existing compact with Ohio. Ap- before this body in 1827, that every acre granted to the propriations, from year to year, have been made to this State for the construction of the Wabash and Erie canal object ever since. They have been sanctioned by every would be an acre well sold, and would swell the amounts administration, and it has long been considered a settled thereafter received in the treasury. I was then thought work of the country, for which estimates are continually to be sanguine and visionary. The bill struggled along, made, as for other public works. The present bill is as this bill is now struggling along. It got through, as I based on one of these estimates, and he supposed that hope this bill will get through. My most sanguine exno member of the Senate, not even those whose constitu- pectations have been doubly realized, and I verily betional scruples prevented them from voting for it, wish-lieve that every acre contained in that grant has brought ed the work now to be wholly abandoned. The road has been finished (said Mr. H.) as far as Hebron, in the State of Ohio, and given up to the States through which it passes, for the purposes of preservation and repair, and much work is done on it beyond that point. It has been retarded in the western part of Ohio by continued efforts to change the route by Dayton, but the road is graded and bridged through the greater portion of Indiana, and is in a condition to be very much injured by neglect and delay in its completion. The continual and almost unparalleled travel on this graded road, subjects it to much injury, and makes continual repairs necessary. To some extent stone is prepared for covering the bed of the road, which, for want of funds, has not yet been put upon it. into the treasury five times as much as it would otherwise have sold for. Without that grant the canal would have been ten or fifteen years later in being commenced and completed. The Upper Wabash lands would have sold at the minimum price, and millions of acres now in the hands of purchasers would still have belonged to the Government. A proposition is now before the Committee on Commerce to appropriate $25,000 for a harbor at Michigan City. You have about one hundred townships of new lands in that section of the State not yet brought into market. Now, it is a calculation perfectly safe, that the making of this appropriation of $25,000 for a harbor at Michigan City, the only place, as is believed, where a harbor can be made within the State of Indiana, will SENATE.] Resignation of Mr. Tyler-Slavery in the District of Columbia. make a difference of $100,000 at the land sales in that vicinity within the present year. The bill before the Senate is based on estimates of the department; and if it be intended to complete this road, as it no doubt will be completed, then it is unquestionably good economy to appropriate the largest sum; for all the contingencies of the disbursements will be the same for the lesser sum as for the larger sum, and the road, if rapidly completed, will cost much less in repairs. As soon as completed it will pass into the hands of the States, as other portions of it farther east have done, and it will be a most valuable public work, of lasting duration, without further expense to the Gov ernment. Mr. BUCHANAN said it had been his fate to travel on this same Cumberland road very often. He should be very glad to obtain the vote of the Senator from Kentucky, but he thought the chance of it somewhat slender. As to completing the work upon the idea or principle of a compact, that was perfectly illusory. The two per cent. fund was long ago exhausted, and the balance in favor of the Government was at least five millions. Why, then, (said Mr. B.,) do I vote for this appropriation? Simply because the policy of constructing this road was long since established. Government must, at any rate, be at the expense, and the only question to be considered was one of time. Let it be finished and done with; and leave it not to be said hereafter that the work cost more because of our delay. This is the reason which will govern my vote; as to any compact, bargain, or obligation, I assent to no such doctrine. I voted originally for the Lexington and Maysville road. I afterwards, whatever I might have thought at the time, approved the consequences of the veto; because I believe, of all bodies, we are the most inefficient to undertake works of internal improvement. The .result would be different, indeed, if the work were national; but there is very great difficulty in determining what is and what is not a national work. Congress should not undertake to distribute the public money; for, in so doing, they only squander it. As to Kentucky, if she has not participated in these public benefits, she is, at least, no worse off than Pennsylvania. A great many years ago, sir, more than I mean to tell, I travelled in Kentucky, and I returned with a most vivid impression of the hospitable kindness of her people, and of the miserable situation of her roads. I wished then, sir, that she might have had the benefit of a set of excellent and able men, by whose labors Pennsylvania has profited so much; but who, I am sorry to add, have been all swept away by the besom of reform. Mr. NILES said a few words in favor of the bill, which, from the position of the reporter, could not be distinctly heard. Mr. BENTON demanded the yeas and nays in every stage of the question; and they were ordered. Mr. CRITTENDEN said that, when he had the honor, sixteen or seventeen years ago, to hold a seat in this body, this three or two per cent. fund was thrown into the market. Gentlemen then said, give it to us now: it will prove a very prolific sum. My humble aid was given; and I now see it as prolific and teeming as ever, in the opinion of some of the honorable gentlemen. They are not satisfied, and they never will be: this very fund will be just as valid in their eyes when one hundred millions are expended as now. Gentlemen are utterly unjust in charging any breach of faith upon the Government. The very words of their bargain will show them to be so. I have observed, too, sir, that they avoid general principles, as grounds upon which they cannot proceed. One argument used by those in [FEB. 29, 1836. favor of this appropriation is, that you increase the value of the public lands: why, sir, the Senator from Indiana, when his State pride is roused, tells us that the population is dense along the road-the lands, therefore, are sold. Kentucky has never been endowed in this way by Government. She has not sprung up under its patronage; nor ought she to be called on to vote an appropriation in which she is not to participate. Gen. tlemen go too far when they ask us to do so. We cannot get a dollar for our own State, and yet we are continually solicited to do something for others. The idea of any compact is entirely futile. The grant of this fund was a gift of the Government-a mere bounty. If gentlemen would view it in this light, he would do much more for them than at present he was inclined to do. Mr. DAVIS said that if the proposition to postpone were put, he should vote for it, not from any feeling of hostility to the bill, but because the chairman of the committee had not laid on the table the proper estimates. It had been said that this information was laid before the Senate last year. He was not in the Senate at that time, and he had not had an opportunity of seeing these estimates; and he thought it could not be viewed as an unreasonable request if he asked for some little time to examine them. A good deal had been said on the subject, which was an interesting one to all; but he certainly must desire a further opportunity of obtaining information on the subject, and for that reason he would now move an adjournment. The motion was agreed to, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29. RESIGNATION OF MR. TYLER. The following letter was received, and laid before the Senate, by the Chair: WASHINGTON, February 29, 1836. SIR: I beg leave through you to inform the Senate that I have, on this day, resigned into the hands of the General Assembly of Virginia, for reasons fully made known to it, my seat in the Senate of the United States, as a Senator from that State. This annunciation is now made, so as to enable the Senate, at its earliest pleasure, to fill such vacancies in the several committees as may be created by my resignation. In taking leave of the body over which you preside, I should be faithless to the feelings of my heart if I did not frankly confess that I do so with no ordinary emotions. I look to the body itself as the representative of those federative principles of our system, to preserve which unimpaired has been the unceasing object of my public life. I separate from many with whom I have been associated for years, and part with friends whose recollection I shall cherish to the close of my life. These are sacrifices which it gives me pain to make. Be pleased to assure the Senate that I carry with me, into retirement, sentiments of respect towards its members; and that, in bidding them adieu, I extend to each and all my best wishes for their health, happiness, and long life. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient servant, JOHN TYLER. Hon. Mr. VAN BUREN. ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. The Senate proceeded to consider the petition of the Friends assembled at Philadelphia, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Mr. BLACK, who was entitled to the floor, being unprepared to speak on the subject to-day, it was sug FEB. 29, 1836.] Slavery in the District of Columbia. gested by Mr. WEBSTER that the subject should lie over until to-morrow; but the sense of the Senate being in favor of proceeding with the discussion, Mr. WALL rose and said: Mr. President, I had hoped that the community of object so strongly and decidedly professed by all who have mingled in this debate would have resulted in some measure acceptable to all, to disarm this question of its excitability, and to relieve the business of the public from its paralyzing effects. I had hoped that some measure, conceived in that noble and fearless spirit of patriotism which in another place, that I am not permitted to mention, has added new honors to a name so illustrious for all that can adorn the chivalry of the soldier and the patriotism of the citizen-a name connected with the most trying and the most glorious periods of our common history, and of the State which gave him birth-would have conducted the dangerous electricity, with which the dark and threatening cloud of abolition incendiarism is supposed to be charged, harmless to the earth. I have been disappointed. The honorable Senator who made the motion to reject the petition presented by the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania has avowed that he feels it his duty not only to persist in that motion, but should feel it to be his high and imperious duty to demand the question of admission on the reception of every other petition of a similar character; and I feel that my duty will not permit me longer to remain silent. Sir, the question raised by that motion is a constitutional question of deep and abiding interest, which comes home to the sensibilities of the whole American people, and, like all constitutional questions, ought to be approached free from all adventitious excitement. 638 [SENATE. Mr. President, these petitioners are not only attached to the Union, but to the principles of our constitution. And well they may be, for their own system of discipline, which dates back long anterior to that constitution, not only contains the same general principles of civil and religious liberty, but in the most remarkable degree shadows forth the same system of government, afterwards so admirably developed and expanded in the State and federal relations of that instrument. And what is it that these petitioners have done, which should bring down upon them the fiery indignation of clude them from the right of being heard in this hall? the honorable gentleman from South Carolina, and exThey have prayed Congress to exercise what they conceive to be their constitutional right over the territory of slavery and the selling of slaves in that District. Adof the District of Columbia, in respect to the abolition mit that they are mistaken; admit that Congress have no constitutional right over slavery in this District, or the exercise of the right of slavery in this District; adfrom the honorable Senator from South Carolina, or mit that they understand the constitution differently even from this Senate; yet I believe it is not a crime in derstands it. If they are mistaken in their views, it beany but one man to construe the constitution as he unlongs to us to determine, and our rights and our duties begin where those of the petitioners ends. Speak to them in the language of courtesy and of reason, and they will submit, although they might think themselves bound very, as they do against the evils of war, and many other in conscience to bear testimony against the evils of slathings which the laws of society recognise. Speak to them as citizens of a common country; satisfy them that it is inexpedient to grant their petition; that it would lives, and the liberties of our fellow-citizens; that it endanger the integrity of the Union, the peace, the would scatter rapine, murder, and desolation, over the fairest portion of the Union, and they would forbear. They would leave it to the providence of God in his own They are for peace and happiness, not blood and rapine. good time to work out the remedy for evils which would be aggravated by the rash and inconsiderate and officious movements of human actions. Tell them, sir, that one human wisdom has ever erected is based upon slavery; of the pillars of the most glorious temple of liberty which Although not my immediate constituents, I have the that you cannot remove that foundation without destroypleasure of knowing some of the very respectable citi-humanity is not of that reckless character that it will ing the whole edifice, and they will be satisfied. Their zens who compose that quarter; and I feel bound, from that knowledge, to say that they are neither fanatics in religion nor politics; and that they seek not to destroy the constitution, or endanger the peace and permanency of the Union. They are what they profess, members of the religious Society of Friends. A society adopting the pure and simple doctrines of the gospel proclaim. ed by the angel herald of the advent of our Saviour, "peace on earth and good will to man," have emphatically taken as their rule of conduct the doctrines which he taught "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you," and "love your neighbor as yourself." These, as well as the other fundamental principles which characterize them, they maintain, not by contention or force, but by bearing what they call their testimony against such acts as they, in their conscience, believe subversive of their golden rules of action. Let me premise, Mr. President, that the petition which you are now called upon to reject does not come from the great laboratory of abolition incendiarism. It does not spring from the heated atmosphere produced by the contention of men struggling for political power; nor does it come from men who, under pretence of conscience, cloak worldly, selfish, or unholy designs. But, sir, it comes from a source which, on this floor, and every where else where the doctrines of the civil and religious liberties of man are maintained, cherished, and supported, is entitled to be heard with respect. It comes from the Caln Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends. Theirs is no pharisaical faith, which impiously invokes the judgment of Heaven upon the sins of others, while vaunting their own superior goodness and virtue. They address not the passions or the feelings of interest or avarice, but the common sense, the wisdom, and justice of man. Their only weapons are the calm, mild, and dispassionate voice of reason, and they conquer, if they conquer at all, by submission and endurance. wade to its object through rivers of blood, and amid the fallen fragments of an empire. surprised when I heard the honorable Senator from Mr. President, I must be allowed to say that I was South Carolina make his motion to reject this petition. I had heard this body called the last refuge of liberty-the defenders of the constitution--the champions of the of power. Is it wise, then, if they are engaged in such liberties of the people against the attacks and assaults a holy struggle against executive power, in defence of thies of the people? Is the liberty for which we are the constitution, to separate themselves from the sympacontending the liberty of letting the people hear our voices? Mr. President, there are other liberties belonging to the people, which they at least value as dearly as the liberty of hearing our voices. Among these, not the least is the liberty of making themselves heard within but two modes of doing this: one is by petition, which these walls--of making us hear their voices. There are the other by instruction, which grates upon our ears in comes to us in the mild and gentle voice of supplication; whether obedience to the latter is to be expunged from the harsh and imperative accents of command. Sir, the list of senatorial duties, may hereafter be determin SENATE.] Slavery in the District of Columbia. [FEB. 29, 1836. ed; but if we reject the right of supplication, if we tion was held by the people in fee simple, without tenabridge the right of the people to petition, it is hazard-der of service to any superior lord, in absolute sovereign ing nothing to predict that we shall spurn and scorn the commands of the people; the step from one to the other is not only easy but natural. Mr. President, I have examined this question with all the care and deliberation that I am capable of exercising, and I feel bound to declare my deliberate judgment that you cannot reject this petition without violating the constitution which you are all sworn to support. I beg you, Mr. President, to look at the petition; it is couched in respectful language to this body, and to every body else. It does not assert the existence of slavery or the selling of slaves any where, or invoke the action of Congress any where, but in the District of Columbia; and that action is to be regulated by the constitution. I beg the honorable Senator from South Carolina to review the petition, and to withdraw his charge that it traduces and vilifies the conduct of the institutions of the State which he so ably represents. I ask where, how, and in what part, letter, or sentence of the petition, does he find the evidence to support this charge? Sir, it is not the habit of the society to which these petitioners belong thus to act. They speak of the evils of slavery, and of the selling of slaves, in the abstract and impersonally. I trust, sir, that we have not yet reached the excited susceptibility of the followers of the Montagues, and the Capulets, when the simple interrogatory, "Do you bite your thumb at us?" could provoke riot, blood, murder, and suicide. It Mr. President, you have no right, no constitutional right, to reject a petition, but for disrespectful language; and even the language must be understood in its mildest sense. The disrespectful language must be so gross as to show that it is not the exercise of the right of petition. In that case, sir, the power of rejection flows not from the constitution, but the inherent primary right which belongs to all representative, deliberative bodies to protect themselves from insult and contempt. If, sir, the language of this petition is disrespectful, it must be because it speaks of slavery and the slave trade, in the abstract, as evils. So decide, and this Senate will cut out for itself new matter for the expunging process. will not be their own acts, over which they have a control, but it will be the acts and labors of the wise and the good of all ages--of the patriots and statesmen of our whole country. You must begin with the declara- | tion of independence-the labors of the sages of the Revolution--the works of Mr. Jefferson--the library which you bought of him--and the whole library of Congress--and finish with the proceedings of Congress itself. Mr. President, the right of petition is not derived from the constitution.. It existed anterior to it. It is a primary, inherent, absolute, and essential right, which belongs to representative government. Its origin, its progress, and its history, is the history of the struggles, the overthrow, and the triumphs of the people. It is the po litical barometer which marks the state of the atmosphere of liberty in every age. Sir, in the deduction of our title to that rich inheritance of Anglo-Saxon liberty, called the folk law, an inheritance which our ancestors brought with them on the first settlement of this country, we find that whenever the real bonafide issue of liberty against power was tried, the right of petition stands forth as one of the most important and essential muniments of liberty, from the first trial at Runny Mead to the final decision by the revolution of 1688, when the right of the people to self-government was finally established. Sir, on this side of the Atlantic it has been consecrated by the blood of our revolutionary sires, and is written in the history of our struggle for freedom. When the constitution was formed, the right of peti ty. It was then, and is now, one of the great prerogatives of the people-an attribute of the sovereignty of the people; and, like all prerogatives which spring from sovereignty, unalienable and indestructible. Sir, it is a great trust, held by the people themselves, for the preservation and maintenance of the liberties of mankind. It could not be granted; and on the adoption of the constitution it was not granted, but remained among the vast mass of the reserved rights of the People. But, Mr. President, so important and essential to the preservation of liberty did the people consider the right of petition, that they were not content to let it remain as a mere reserved right of the people. The statesmen of those days were deeply imbued with the great principles of popular liberty, and thoroughly acquainted with its history in all ages. Especially they were acquainted with the principles of the English law. Extra Parliamentum, nulla petitio est grata licet necessaria: in Parliamento, nulla petitio est ingrata, si necessaria, is the old-fashioned whig maxim of Lord Coke. They knew that in the third year of the reign of the first Charles, when the arbitrary conduct of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties had made it necessary for the people to recur to first principles, as if to render the right of petition and the primary rights of man one and indivisible, and to consecrate them as the great monuments of civil liberty, the petition which recited the principles of Magna Charta, with the acknowledgment of the King of their truth, was solemnly enrolled among the rolls of Parliament; and afterwards, in the thirteenth year of the same reign, was enacted into a statute. They knew that, notwithstanding that solemn confirmation, in the 22d year of Charles II, the right of petition was abridged, by excluding matters of state and religion from the subject-matter of petition, unless sanctioned by the magistracy, and even then, if it was signed by more than twenty persons, or presented by more than ten. They knew that, by the glorious revolution 1688-glorious because it was the first where the right of the sovereignty of the people to confer power was made the foundation of Government-the right of petition was restored to its pristine freedom by the bill of rights. They knew that, notwithstanding all this, Lord Mansfield had then recently, on the celebrated trial of Lord George Gordon, by judicial legislation, done what no Parliament of Great Britain would have dared to have done--abrogated the clause of the bill of rights which repealed the statute of 32 Charles II, and re-enacted that statute abridging the right of petition. They knew, sir, that, in the English law, the right of peaceably assembling, and the right of petitioning for the redress of grievances, were held only subordinate to the primary rights of life, liberty, and property, but the necessary and indispensable auxiliaries to them. Hence, sir, the first amendment to the constitution declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." By this amendment the people did not grant to Congress any right to intermeddle with the right of petition. They did not grant any of their reserved rights; but they meant "to make assurance doubly sure, and take a bond of fate," to take away from Congress all power whatever over the right of petition. Mark the language: "Congress shall make no law prohibiting or abridging," &c. It seems to have been drawn in express reference to the decision of Lord Mansfield in Lord George Gordon's case, and to the statute 32 Charles II, which abridged the right of petition, and which was re suscitated by that decision. It withdraws from Congress all right of interference with the right of petition in any form or in any shape whatever; and if it be true, as is stated by the honorable Senator from South Carolina, in a recent report submitted to this House, that the celebrated report of Mr. Madison to the Virginia Legislature in 1799, conclusively settled that Congress has no right, in any form or in any manner, to interfere with the freedom of the press; and the violation of that principle, in the enactment of the sedition act, was the leading cause of the civil revolution of 1801. If this be so, sir, how can a distinction be drawn between the right of Congress to abridge the freedom of the press and the freedom of petition? They are alike protected by the same clause of the constitution, and by the same language placed within congressional action. If this be so, sir, the people themselves have settled the construc. tion of this clause irreversibly. How, Mr. President, then, can we deny the right of petition without violating the constitution, without a gross usurpation of a power not only not granted to us, but withheld from us in clear, plain, and unequivocal language? We cannot make any law, we cannot legislate at all, as to the right of petition; we cannot, calling to our aid all the powers of the House of Representatives and the Executive also, the whole powers of legislation, abridge, in any form or shape, the right of petition. Can we do it by rule? No, sir, surely not. We cannot do indirectly what we cannot do directly. But, sir, the Senate have done no such thing. Their rules have been drawn by sound constitutional lawyers. Page fortyeight, section twenty-four, rules of the Senate, declares: "Before any petition or memorial, addressed to the Senate, shall be received and read at the table, whether the same shall be introduced by the President or a member, a brief statement of the contents of the petition or memorial shall verbally be made by the introducer." The rules, then, simply regulate the mode of the introduction of a petition. They go no further; they could not go further by the constitution, or without violating it. They make no question of the reception of petitions. The rejection of a petition for abuse or contempt is an anomaly, and must furnish its own rule. Sir, how is the rejection of this petition attempted to be justified? It is by the lex parliamentaria, the law of Parliament. Now, it is clear that this rule respecting the reception of a petition, founded on the law of Parliament, has never been adopted, and could not be adopt ed, by the Senate. It is hostile to the principles of that constitution under which they hold their seats. It is adopted for another meridian; a meridian where the right of petition has been abridged by act of Parliament, by judicial decisions, usurping legislative powers; where it has been pared down to the size of parliamentary discretion. Here, sir, it is too mighty, too large, for senatorial power, much less for senatorial discretion, to grasp; and can it be seriously contended that it can be abridged by the parliamentary law of England, borrowed or not borrowed, adopted or not adopted, naturalized or not naturalized? No, sir, no. The position cannot be maintained. Such a doctrine assumes for its basis that the Senate may violate the constitution with impunity, under the shield of the rule of the British Parliament, wholly inconsistent with, and subversive of, the principles of that constitution. But, sir, it has been said that the right of petition is limited to grievances which personally affect the petitioners. Sir, this doctrine sounds strangely to my ears. It is not the doctrine of the Revolution; and it is there that the people of the United States have learned their lessons of that right. It is not the doctrine of our anVOL. XII-41 [SENATE. cestors. It is not the doctrine of liberty. It is not the doctrine of our constitution. Sir, as respects the Union, the Government is a unit. That great mass of human lib. erty which reposes in safety under the protection of our constitution is composed of the rights and liberties, the prosperity and adversity, the weal and the wo, of each citizen and each section of our wide-extended empire. Sir, the sympathy between the members of the natural body is not more direct and immediate than that between all the members of this great republic. Touch the right, the interest, or the liberties, of the humblest citizen of this great republic, no matter where his lot may be cast, and the pulsation is felt in every part. Raise but the cry of oppression in the remotest prairie of Missouri, or the rudest dell of the Alleghanies, and the cry is echoed and re-echoed, ay, sir, and felt too, in every street and in every alley of every city and town, in every valley and upon every hill top and mountain of the extended limits of the Union. We are bonded together for common weal and common wo. It is this which breathes the Promethean fire of liberty into the cold and chiselled forms of republican government. Sir, the grievance of one is the grievance of all. So thought, so felt, so acted, the gallant sires of the constituents of the honorable Senator, in the darkest and most fearful period of the Revolution, before compact had added new obligations to the sacred ties of a common ancestry, kindred, and institutions. The cry of oppression raised in Faneuil Hall pealed over the whole South; and petition for redress of grievances, grievances which fell first upon the cradle of liberty only, beseiged the English Parliament from all quarters of the good old thirteen States. The true doctrine upon this subject is written in the history of the Revolution in characters of blood; of the blood of our sires in the East and West, the North and the South. The right of petition for the redress of grievances is as broad and expansive as the right of the citizen, and circumscribed only by the limits of the Union. It can be abridged only by those limits. The people must be, and are, the judges of what is or is not a grievance. Another objection has been made to the reception of this petition, that it prays what the Congress cannot constitutionally grant. Admit it. What then? Is that a cause for rejecting the petition? Does the gentleman forget the principles which lie at the foundation of our institutions, of our Revolution: that government was instituted by the people and for their benefit, and that they may remodel it when they see proper? Does he forget the doctrines of the declaration of independence? Does he forget the provision of the constitution which expressly provides for amendments? But, sir, has the question as to the constitutional power of Congress over slavery and the treatment of slaves in the District of Columbia been settled? when? where? how? Is it not a question at least so open that a difference of opinion may be entertained? And if so, sir, (and I do not mean myself now to express any opinion on the subject,) is it a ground for rejecting a petition? It may be good ground for rejecting the prayer of a petition, that it asks what we have no power to grant. But we must receive it, understand it, examine it, to judge. We must receive it in order to enable us to discharge our duties. We must not forget that it is our duty to sustain the rights of the people; that in this hall the relation between us and the people is, on the side of the people, rights; and on our side, duties. Sir, where will this doctrine carry the honorable Senator? The Legislatures of some States have instruct ed their Senators to vote in favor of what are called the expunging resolutions. I believe, sir, that some people have imagined that the resolutions are unconstitutional. Are they to be rejected? Is a sovereign State |