but at a very early age removed into the Western country, I was a citizen of Ohio, at the time of the adoption of her Constitution, and during the greater part of the last thirty years have borne an humble part in the legislative assembly of my own state, where by my best efforts I have constantly endeavored to maintain and establish those great principles, in support of which your society is now engaged. I feel unable to express

my heartfelt emotions on receiving your invitation to be present at the opening of the Hall in the emporium of my native state, a city renowned for its philanthropy and benevolence, and now affording new evidence of those estimable virtues, by the erection of a hall, in which liberty and equality of civil rights can be FREELY discussed, and the evils of slavery fearlessly portrayed. While the spirit of slavery is grasping at the power of our country, threatening a disunion of the states unless free discussion concerning it be destroyed, and even in the free states marking its progress in scenes of blood, it is a cause for joy and gratulation that Pennsylvaniathat PHILADELPHIA is about to consecrate one spot, at least, where its evils may be fearlessly portrayed. Slavery is a spirit which hates the light, because its deeds are evil, and to banish it entirely from our country, free discussion alone is amply sufficient. I rejoice in the awakening energies of the country, and in receiving almost daily assurance that my fellow citizens are determined to maintain those inalienable rights, without which they would be in a situation little in advance of the African slave himself.

I will, if life and health permit, endeavor to be present at the opening of your Hall, but I would gladly dispense with the delivery of an address on that occasion, could I do so consistent with your wishes, as I cannot suppose myself capable of adding any information to that mass which is already before the public, on this interesting topic: but whatever feeble service I can render to the great and good cause in which you are engaged will be cheerfully offered.

You will for yourselves, and those whom you represent, accept the assurance of my highest regard.

THOMAS MORRIS.

Messrs. Samuel Webb, J. M. Truman, and Wm. M'Kee,-Committee.

The following leter from THOMAS MORRIS was also received by the Committee, but not in time to have it read.

WASHINGTON, May 11, 1838.

Gentlemen:-I have seen in the Pennsylvania Freeman of the 3d inst., with sensations of the deepest gratitude, the favorable notice you have been pleased to take of my name in your general invitation to the public to attend the opening of the Pennsylvania Hall on the 14th of the present month, which Hall, I understand, is to be dedicated to free discussion.

It would afford me the highest pleasure to be present and join you in this work of universal charity and love, could I feel that my public duties as well as my health would justify it-domestic concerns having lately called me to Ohio; I have but just resumed my seat here; it seems proper, therefore, that I should not willingly, at this time, absent myself from the Senate.

What a

Your Hall, as I have said, is to be dedicated to free discussion. train of solemn reflections does the very thought create in the mind. Is it possible, that in the free state of Pennsylvania, in the quiet and orderly city of Philadelphia, (a city not inaptly called the city of "brotherly love,") that in all places, and at all times, free discussion on all questions connected with the religion, morality, the welfare of the country, or the rights of man,

cannot be had with safety to the citizen, and the peace and quiet of the community? I presume this cannot be the case in your city, and was not the great moving cause that induced your humane, philanthropic, and patriotic citizens to erect the Hall which they are about to open.

If, however, Pennsylvania is safe, if Philadelphia is secure from all attempts to put down the right of free discussion, the liberty of speech, and the press, your fellow citizens have seen and felt that all parts of our beloved country is not thus highly favored. It is gratifying, indeed, that while the enemy of human rights and constitutional liberty is, in our country, making rapid advances to power, endeavoring as far as in him lies, not only to silence discussion, but even to muzzle the press itself, knowing that his principles cannot stand the test of examination, Philadelphia has the honor to erect a barrier which he cannot pass, and a battery which he cannot silence, but which will effectually destroy his whole power, by the consecration of a spot where all his pretensions may be fully and fairly discussed.

This act of your citizens I regard not as a local act merely. It is not for Philadelphia alone to receive its benefits, but the whole country-the whole world. Its objects are universal and impartial justice to all men in every condition, to establish each in his own inherent, individual, and unalienable rights, to give warning of approaching danger, and stay the rod of the oppressor; and as such, we claim for the day of consecration a bright page in the history of our country.

Every philanthropist, every moralist must mourn and deplore the riots, burnings, and murders, that of late have taken place in our country.

Your own recollections will be sufficient to place before your minds scenes of the most outrageous atrocity. How often has tidings of the destruction of the press, because it has spoken fearlessly in defence of human rights, tingled in your ears? Have you not heard that free born AMERICAN CITIZENS have been, by a lawless mob, subjected to the infamous torture of the wHIP? Has not the weapon of the assassin laid its victim bleeding at his feet, for no crime, for no act but that which you intend to practise in the Hall you have erected the exercise of the right of FREE DISCUSSION. While I rejoice that your citizens are embodying themselves to march forward to the rescue, I mourn for my country that this same fell spirit which has urged mobs, not only of the "baser sort," but of citizens who claim to be respectable, to deeds of violence and blood, has found its way in some degree into the councils and official stations of the country, into the bosom of society, and I much fear into the very PULPIT itself, thus rendering insecure all that is dear and sacred to man.

I would willingly draw a veil over the proceedings of that body, of which I have the honor to be a member, in regard to the important right of free discussion, if the deep sense of the obligations of duty which I feel to you and the country would permit me to do so. This same spirit, which you are about so nobly to rebuke, has been able, in the very halls of Congress, to silence debate at its pleasure. It has been able to strike its deadly fangs into the most vital part of American liberty. It has denied the right of petition, in all its essential qualities, to a large portion of our fellow citizens, on a subject they deemed worthy of their highest consideration, and materially affecting the honor and interest of our country. If it were possible, I would that I could persuade myself not to believe this, but while the records of our country bear witness to the fact, it cannot be. I fervently pray that the tear of some recording angel may yet be dropped upon the words of shame and dishonor, and blot them out for ever.

If the supreme legislature of the country can rightfully, in any one possi

ble instance, refuse to receive, hear, and act upon petitions sent by any portion of the human race who are subject to our laws, or owe allegiance to our government, I can see no safe guarantee for this high privilege in any case whatever, when it shall come in contact with power, interest, or influence. For if an individual right which was deemed of a character too sacred to be regulated or controlled by the people themselves, by their highest fundamental law, (the Constitution,) and placed by that instrument above the power of Congress to ABRIDGE, can be withheld or restrained by that body, it is hard to discover what political or natural right you, or I, or any other citizen, can calculate upon as secure. If the right of petition fail us, will it not prove that the whole fabric of the Constitution is rotten and not worth our care; its preservation in such case for any valuable purpose might well be considered doubtful.

It is not only the right of petition that has been abridged. The freedom of debate has been stricken down, and lies dead in the halls Congress. We are compelled to submit not only to a rule which imposes silence on a question to lay a motion or proposition on the table, and which a majority can always use to put an end to discussion disagreeable to them, however important it may be to others; but the country now mourns the loss of one of her most talented sons, whose life, it is believed, was sacrificed for the exercise of the right of free discussion in the very hall of Congress itself. It would be some consolation if, in the midst of this war upon individual rights, this want of personal security, this waste of political privileges in the chambers of legislation, the judiciary of the country remained firm and uncontaminated. But here we have also to deplore, that the incendiary with the torch in his hand scarcely extinguished, with which he had attempted to fire his neighbor's dwelling, because of that neighbor's exercise of his unquestionable right in the free expression of his opinion; and the mobocrat who has attempted to silence the press by its destruction, together with the assassin whose red hands are yet dripping with the blood of his innocent victim, find not only protection but favor;-and this new code of morals which would impose restraint upon the expression of our thoughts because the truth may affect some pecuniary interest, or expose some wicked practice, teaches the doctrine that a printing press may be broken up, a man's house may be burned, and the owner slain by violence, and yet no one be GUILTY! It has been said, and I think truly, that the verdicts of juries give the character of the country. What, then, will be the character of our country before an impartial world, if juries shall continue to lend themselves to this same spirit of misrule, and violence, and blood?

But if we withdraw our views from the constituted authorities of the land, from men in official stations, and extend it over the country at large, what do we behold? The Bowie-knife and the pistol substituted for reason and argument, usurping the power of the laws, or setting them at defiance,— the actors professing to draw the example from high places of power, and justifying themselves by the actions of men who claim to be among our most respectable citizens. It is against the freedom of speech, the right of free discussion, that these ruffians in society wage their fiercest war.

I am aware that it may be thought that I have written hard things against my fellow citizens; but do not the facts that exist justify me? And should I not be faithless, indeed, and recreant to all my principles, if, when writing to you on the important event which you are about to celebrate, I should either fail or fear to express my thoughts fully and freely? If I did not do so, I might well be considered a mocker of the institutions I profess to honor. The picture I have presented, I know is one not calculated to

flatter our vanity; but it is no fancy sketch-it has all the painful vividness of reality.

We should ponder on the signs of the times with serious deliberation. We have been and are still a prosperous and favored people; but I fear that in the eyes of Him in whose hands are our destinies, and who can search the heart, we are viewed as a proud and sinful nation. And if his chastisements have not already commenced, our wickedness, without repentance, must call them down at last.

To understand our errors, and know the evil that besets us, is the first step towards reformation. To examine into, and ascertain the causes which have produced those evils, is necessary to their radical cure. This examination I shall now attempt. There is implanted in our very nature a love of power and dominion, no doubt for wise and beneficial purposes; but dominion, in the creation of man, was only given him over "the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth." It was never intended by the Creator that man should have dominion over his fellow man, but by his full and free consent. Had this been intended, it would have been given when the boundaries of man's dominion were fixed and established. The exercise, then, of all power which subjects man to involuntary servitude, and to a dominion to which he has not given his full and free consent, is a violation of the laws of heaven, and contrary to the very nature of man, who, though formed for dominion and imbued with its love, yet has authority from his Maker to exercise it only over inanimate matter, and over creatures not made in the awful image of God!

But when man became wicked and corrupt, he began to usurp dominion over his fellow man, reducing the weaker and less guarded portions of the race to the condition of the cattle of the field. This, however, could not totally destroy the principle of reason within the immortal creature thus degraded; he knew still that he was entitled to the same rights as his fellow man, and that his condition was the effect of gross injustice and grinding oppression. This produced the constant strife between the oppressed and the oppressor, the fruitful source of violence and crime through all time, and created the desire and stimulated the action of those in power to prevent, as far as possible, all examination into the rights of man as established by his Creator.

The exercise of dominion begat the love of ease and opulence. This could more readily be obtained by appropriating to his own use the labor of others without any just compensation therefor. Thus the love of money, the root of all evil, grew and expanded. In our own time and day, those principles which our fathers intended to subdue and eradicate, if possible, in the formation of a Constitution founded upon the natural and unalienable rights of man, have sprouted afresh, with a luxuriance which is calculated to fill the mind of the just and good with deep and solemn reflection.

I have heard it asserted by a sagacious statesman of our own country, that it was one of the unchanged and unchangeable laws of Providence that one man should live upon the labor of another, that this always had and always would be the case, and that American slavery, as it existed in the Southern states, was the best human modification of that unalterable decree. This was the language of a Southern gentleman, from a slaveholding state. The practical operation of this despotic system, of man as an individual usurping dominion over man, and endeavoring to live upon the labor of others, began in our country with the slaveholders, and its ramifications are now seen and felt in all parts of our country. The desire to live upon the unrequited labor of others is acquiring a dreadful universality. It is the

slaveholding power,-this Goliath of all monopolies,-that now brandishes his spear and threatens the overthrow of our most essential rights, and the most sacred of all our privileges. It defies even the Constitution, itself, to engage in single combat. It claims to be before and superior to that instrument, which it contends has acknowledged its superiority, and has guaranteed its existence and perpetual duration. It imperiously asserts that it has converted men into property; and, as a matter of course, any person, when he becomes a CITIZEN of the United States, has a right to the enjoyment and use of this species of property, in each and every state in the Union. It is upon this false position, that a person can be converted by law into a thing, that slavery rests its whole claim-a position at war with the Constitution of the United States, and which ought not to be sustained in our courts of justice. It is provided in the fourth article of the amendments to the Constitution, that the right of the PEOPLE to be secure in their PERSONS against unwarrantable seizure shall not be violated; and that warrants, when issued, shall particularly describe the PERSONS or THINGS to be seized. I suggest, then, as the settled conviction of my own mind, that our courts of justice cannot rightfully adjudge that a negro slave is property, BECAUSE HE IS NOT A THING, and property consists in things ONLY. That he may be claimed as owing labor or service to another, does not shake, but confirms the argument.

If the free states intend to continue free, as it respects negro slavery and all its concomitant evils, they must not permit that system to take one single step beyond its constitutional, legal, and present geographical boundaries. If it can break one bar of its enclosure, it will be like the unchained lion escaping from his cage-it will make war upon and destroy every obstacle that opposes its onward march. It will be insatiate until all constitutional barriers which may impede its progress shall be broken down and destroyed; we shall be unable to stay its fury, or appease its rage, or again reduce it to constitutional limits; and the consequences will be that our entire liberties will be annihilated. The evils and propensities of the slaveholding system, which I have but faintly attempted to describe, are not the workings of imagination. I draw on sober realities and solemn facts. Who in our country justified slavery during the war of the revolution? No one, who was willing to defend his country from the grasp of the oppressor, or shed his blood in defence of her liberties. Who justified the practice, or contended for its perpetual duration, at the close of that memorable contest? Not a single hero or patriot of that day. Did any one attempt to make its chains more strong, or bind its victims more securely, or enlarge its borders by any constitutional provision? No, not one. Slavery at that day was deemed so dissonant to the principles of American liberty, that none were found to render it so much respect as to insert its name, or even the word "slave," in the Constitution.

All then looked for and desired the speedy downfall of the entire system; and Congress proceeded to fix limits to its power, and rebuke its practice upon every possible occasion, as in the ordinance in the year 1787, for the government of the North-Western territory, and in subsequent acts passed after the adoption of the Constitution.

But slavery flattered the pride of man, because it enabled him to extend his legitimate dominion beyond its just and rightful landmarks. It gratified his cupidity by increasing the means of enjoyment. It was adhered to, not as a political, but as an individual claim, and was left subject to the power of the laws, and in that day, like all other subjects, it was freely discussed at all times and in all places without fear or restraint. But what is the condition of the country now? Slaves have increased vastly in number, and