existed in harmony 'together, both conducing to the prosperity of that great country; and they have so existed, and so contributed, because each has avoided cherishing towards the other that wanton and unnecessary spirit of hostility which was unfortunately engendered in the bosom of the late President of the United States.

In

I am admonished, sir, by my exhausted strength, and by, I fear, your more exhausted patience, to hasten to a close. Mr. President, a great, novel and untried measure is perseveringly urged upon the acceptance of Congress. That it is pregnant with tremendous consequences, for good or evil, is undeniable, and admitted by all. We firmly believe that it will be fatal to the best interests of this country, and ultimately subversive of its liberties. You, who have been greatly disappointed in other measures of equal promise, can only hope, in the doubtful and uncertain future, that its operation may prove salutary. Since it was first proposed at the extra session, the whole people have not had an opportunity of passing in judgment upon it at their elections. As far as they have, they have expressed their unqualified disapprobation. From Maine to the state of Mississippi, its condemnation has been loudly thundered forth. every intervening election, the administration has been defeated, or its former majorities neutralized. Maine has spoken; NewYork, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Rhode Island, Mississippi and Michigan; all these states, in tones and terms not to be misunderstood, have denounced the measure. The key-stone state (God bless her) has twice proclaimed her rejection of it, once at the polls, and once through her Legislature. Friends and foes of the administration have united in condemning it. And, at the very moment when I am addressing you, a large meeting of the late supporters of the administration, headed by the distinguished gentleman who presided in the electoral college which gave the vote of that patriotic state to President Van Buren, are assembling in Philadelphia, to protest solemnly against the passage of this bill. Is it right that, under such circumstances, it should be forced upon a reluctant but free and intelligent people? Is it right that this Senate, constituted as it now is, should give its sanction to the measure? I say it in no disrespectful or taunting sense, but we are entitled, according to the latest expressions of the popular will, and in virtue of manifestations of opinion deliberately expressed by State Legisla tures, to a vote of thirty-five against the bill; and I am ready to enter, with any Senator friendly to the administration, into details to prove the assertion. Will the Senate, then, bring upon itself the odium of passing this bill? I implore it to forbear, forbear, forbear! I appeal to the instructed Senators. Is this government made for us, or for the people and the states, whose agents we are? Are we not bound so to administer it as to advance their welfare, promote their prosperity, and give general satisfaction? Will that sacred trust be fulfilled, if the known

sentiments of large and respectable communities are despised and condemned by those whom they have sent here? I call upon the honorable Senator from Alabama, (Mr. King,) with whom I have so long stood in the public councils, shoulder to shoulder, bearing up the honor and the glory of this great people, to come now to their rescue. I call upon all the Senators; let us bury, deep and forever, the character of the partizan, rise up patriots and statesmen, break the vile chains of party, throw the fragments to the winds, and feel the proud satisfaction that we have made but a small sacrifice to the paramount obligations which we owe our common country.

ABOLITION PETITIONS.

In Senate, Thursday, February 7, 1839.

Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, rose to present a petition, and said: I have received, Mr. President, a petition to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, which I wish to present to the Senate. It is signed by several hundred inhabitants of the District of Columbia, and chiefly of the city of Washington. Among them I recognize the name of the highly esteemed mayor of the city, and other respectable names, some of which are personally and well known to me. They express their regret that the subject of the abolition of slavery within the District of Columbia continues to be pressed upon the consideration of Congress by inconsiderate and misguided individuals in other parts of the United States. They state that they do not desire the abolition of slavery within the district, even if Congress possess the very questionable power of abolishing it, without the consent of the people whose interests would be immediately and directly affected by the measure; that it is a question solely between the people of the district and their only constitutional legislature, purely municipal, and one in which no exterior influence or interest can justly interfere; that, if at any future period the people of this district should desire the abolition of slavery within it, they will doubtless make their wishes known, when it will be time enough to take the matter into consideration; that they do not, on this occasion, present themselves to Congress because they are slave-holders-many of them are not; some of them are conscientiously opposed to slavery—but they appear because they justly respect the rights of those who own that description of property, and because they entertain a deep conviction that the continued agitation of the question by those who have no right to interfere with it, has an injurious influence on the peace and tranquility of the community, and upon the well-being and happiness of those who are held in subjection;

they finally protest as well against the unauthorized intervention of which they complain, as against any legislation on the part of Congress in compliance therewith. But, as I wish these respectable petitioners to be themselves heard, I request that their petition may be read. [It was read accordingly, and Mr. Clay proceeded.] I am informed by the committee which requested me to offer this petition, and believe, that it expresses the almost unanimous sentiments of the people of

the District of Columbia.

The performance of this service affords me, said Mr. C., a legitimate opportunity, of which, with the permission of the Senate, I mean now to avail myself, to say something, not only on the particular objects of the petition, but upon the great and interesting subject with which it is intimately associated.

It is well known to the Senate, said Mr. Clay, that I have thought that the most judicious course with abolition petitions has not been of late pursued by Congress. I have believed that it would have been wisest to have received and referred them, without opposition, and to have reported against their object in a calm and dispassionate and argumentatative appeal to the good sense of the whole community. It has been supposed, however, by a majority of Congress, that it was most expedient either not to receive the petitions at all, or, if formally received, not to act definitively upon them. There is no substantial difference between these opposite opinions, since both look to an absolute rejection of the prayer of the petitioners. But there is a great difference in the form of proceeding; and, Mr. President, some experience in the conduct of human affairs has taught me to believe that a neglect to observe established forms is often attended with more mischievous consequences than the infliction of a positive injury. We all know that, even in private life, a violation of the existing usages and ceremonies of society cannot take place without serious prejudice. I fear, sir, that the abolitionists have acquired a considerable apparent force by blending with the object which they have in view a collateral and totally different question arising out of an alledged violation of the right of petition. I know full well, and take great pleasure in testifying, that nothing was remoter from the intention of the majority of the Senate, from which I differed, than to violate the right of petition in any case in which, according to its judgment, that right could be constitutionally exercised, or where the object of the petition could be safely or properly granted. Still, it must be owned that the abolitionists have seized hold of the fact of the treatment which their petitions have received in Congress, and made injurious impressions upon the minds of a large portion of the community. This, I think, might have been avoided by the course which I should have been glad to have seen pursued.

And I desire now, Mr. President, to advert to some of those topics which I think might have been usefully embodied in a re

port by a committee of the Senate, and which, I am persuaded, would have checked the progress, if it had not altogether arrested the efforts of abolition. I am sensible, sir, that this work would have been accomplished with much greater ability and with much happier effect, under the auspices of a committee, than it can be by me. But, anxious as I always am to contribute whatever is in my power to the harmony, concord, and happiness of this great people, I feel myself irresistably impelled to do whatever is in my power, incompetent as I feel myself to be, to dissuade the public from continuing to agitate a subject fraught with the most direful consequences.

There are three classes of persons opposed, or apparently opposed, to the continued existence of slavery in the United States. The first are those who, from sentiments of philanthropy and humanity, are conscientiously opposed to the existence of slavery, but who are no less opposed, at the same time, to any disturbance of the peace and tranquillity of the Union, or the infringement of the powers of the states composing the confederacy. In this class may be comprehended that peaceful and exemplary society of "Friends," one of whose established maxims is, an abhorrence of war in all its forms, and the cultivation of peace and good-will amongst mankind. The next class consists of apparent abolitionists-that is, those who, having been persuaded that the right of petition has been violated by Congress, cooperate with the abolitionists for the sole purpose of asserting and vindicating that right. And the third class are the real ultra-abolitionists, who are resolved to persevere in the pursuit of their object at all hazards, and without regard to any consequences, however calamitous they may be. With them the rights of property are nothing; the deficiency of the powers of the general government is nothing; the acknowledged and incontestible powers of the states are nothing; civil war, a dissolution of the Union, and the overthrow of a government in which are concentrated the fondest hopes of the civilized world, are nothing. A single idea has taken possession of their minds, and onward they pursue it, overlooking all barriers, reckless and regardless of all consequences. With this class, the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the territory of Florida, the prohibition of the removal of slaves from state to state, and the refusal to admit any new state, comprising within its limits the institution of domestic slavery, are but so many means conduciug to the accomplishment of the ultimate but perilous end at which they avowedly and boldly aim; are but so many short stages in the long and bloody road to the distant goal at which they would finally arrive. Their purpose is abolition, universal abolition, peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must. Their object is no longer concealed by the thinnest veil; it is avowed and proclaimed. Utterly destitute of constitutional or other rightful power, living in totally distinct com

munities, as alien to the communities in which the subject on which they would operate resides, so far as concerns political power over that subject, as if they lived in Africa or Asia, they nevertheless promulgate to the world their purpose to be to manumit forthwith, and without compensation, and without moral preparation, three millions of negro slaves, under jurisdictions altogether separated from those under which they live. I have said that immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and the territory of Florida, and the exclusion of new states, were only means towards the attainment of a much more important end. Unfortunately, they are not the only means. Another, and much more lamentable one is that which this class is endeavoring to employ, of arraying one portion against another portion of the Union. With that view, in all their leading prints and publications, the alledged horrors of slavery are depicted in the most glowing and exaggerated colors, to excite the imaginations and stimulate the rage of the people in the free states against the people in the slave states. The slave-holder is held up and represented as the most atrocious of human beings. Advertisements of fugitive slaves and of slaves to be sold, are carefully collected and blazoned forth, to infuse a spirit of detestation and hatred against one entire and the largest section of the Union. And like a notorious agitator upon another theatre, they would hunt down and proscribe from the pale of civilized society the inhabitants of that entire section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say, that whilst I recognize in the justly wounded feelings of the minister of the United States at the court of St. James, much to excuse the notice which he was provoked to take of that agitator, in my humble opinion, he would better have consulted the dignity of his station and of his country in treating him with contemptuous silence. He would exclude us from European society-he who himself can only obtain a contraband admission, and is received with scornful repugnance into it! If he be no more desirous of our society than we are of his, he may rest assured that a state of eternal nonintercourse will exist between us. Yes, sir, I think the American minister would have best pursued the dictates of true dignity by regarding the language of the member of the British House of Commons as the malignant ravings of the plunderer of his own country, and the libeller of a foreign and kindred people.

But the means to which I have already adverted, are not the only ones which this third class of ultra-abolitionists are employing to effect their ultimate end. They began their operations by professing to employ only persuasive means in appealing to the humanity, and enlightening the understandings, of the slaveholding portion of the Union. If there were some kindness in this avowed motive, it must be acknowledged that there was rather a presumptuous display also of an assumed superiority in intelligence and knowledge. For some time they continued to make these appeals to our duty and our interest; but impatient