6 nial they employ. Do gentlemen say the law would never be so executed? Be it so. What would prevent it? The law of force, or the fear of force. The standing outrage and indignity, standing on the defiled pages of the statute book; are still the same. What next? Look at your Cherokee troubles, and your Seminole War. One of those misfortunes of the Cherokees, which led to your driving them off at the cost of the national honor in the violation of sixteen treaties, was, that they were charged with harboring fugitive slaves. The same was the great sin of the Seminoles in Florida, expiated in a stubborn conflict of seven years’ dura tion, at the price of I know not how many lives, and of at least twenty millions of dollars, (and nobody knows how much more,) of which we of the North had to pay our share, sooner than Southern slaves should get away from their owners. But time is wasting, and I must pass entirely over many things, and lightly over many others. As to this Political Aspect of the Slave Question, how has it dealt with our right of petition, and our freedom of speech and of the press —the two last belonging to the inheritance of our Anglo-Saxon manhood, the' former commonly recognised in the poorest vassal that crouches before a despot’s throne. For several years, the petitions of our constituents for the redress of what they felt to be offensive grievances were contemptuously thrown back by a standing regulation of this House; and now the most that we have gained is, that they may go into the hands of the Committee on the District, which committee, it is just as well understood as if it were formally set down and ordained in your rules and orders, is to do its office by simply burying them out of sight, and taking care that they be no more heard of forever. Liberty of speech and liberty of the press, what are they worth in nearly half of the States of this Union, if one would exercise them in relation to the great moral, social, and political question of the time? On that subject, within those borders, who does not know that a man is not to speak or print his mind, .except at peril of life and limb? Nor does personal liberty, in certain circumstances, fare better. By the Constitution of Massachusetts, established in 1780, people of color are citizens of that commonwealth, as much as whites. And by the Federal Constitution, which went into operation in 1789, all u citizens of each State are entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” By the constitution of Massachusetts, I say, freedom is universal within her limits, and citizenship has nothing to do with color. There was never an act of Emancipation in that commonwealth. Emancipation took place by force of the organic law. Three years after its adoption, a colored man prosecuted a white for assault and battery. The fact was admitted, but justified on the ground that the black was a slave, and that the assault was the lawful chastisement of the master. The court held, that under the clause of the bill of rights declaring that (( all men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties,” (language almost copied from that written by a Virginia pen in the Declaration of Independence,) no such relations as those of master and slave could subsist in Massachusetts. The master was convicted and fined, and slavery took its last leave of her jurisdiction. The colored citizen of Massachusetts goes on his lawful occasions to a Southern State, with just as good a constitutional right to tread its soil in security and at will, as the heir of its own longest and proudest lineage. But not only is he forbidden by a pseudo-legislation of the place to land therein freedom, he, is not permitted even to remain in freedom on-board the ship that has conveyed'’ him. He is forced on shore to a prison; and when he is discharged and departs, it is on the payment of a ransom, called the expense of his detention. If he comes a second time, he is scourged. If a third, he is sold into perpetual slavery So decrees the so-called law. Massachusetts was uneasy to have her
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