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Show 14 staining from physical resistance; but we arc under no obligation to bow to them our moral judgment, our free thoughts, our free speech. What ? Is conscience to stoop from its supremacy, and to become an echo of the human magistrate? Is the Jaw, written by God's finger on the heart, placed at the mercy of interested statesmen ? Is it not one of the chief marks of social progress, that men are coming to recognise immutable principles, to understand the independence of truth and duty on human will, on the sovereignty of the state, whether lodged in one or many hands ? You and I, Sir, observe the golden rule, concerning Southern slavery . We do to _our neighbour, what we wish our neighbour to do to us. We expose, as we can, the crimes and cruelties of other States, and we ask of other States the same freedom towards our own. If, in the opin· ion of the civilized world, or of any portion of it, we of this Commonwealth are robbing men of their derrrest rights, and treading them in the dust, let the wrong be proclaimed far and wide. If good men anywhere believe, that here the weak are at the mercy of the strong, and the poor are denied the protection of the laws, then let them make every State of the Union ring with indignant rebuke. Especially if a giant evil is here incorporated with our civil institutions, upheld by the public force, so that the sufferers are made dumb, so that they endure the last wrong irt being forbidden to spcal< of their wrongs, then, we say, let humanity beyond our borders take hold of their cause. If the oppressed are muzzled here, Jet the lips of the free elsewhere give voice to their wrongs. In the preceding remarks, I have gone on the supposi· tion, that the slaveholding States, as far as slavery is con· cerned, stand to the other States on the footing of foreign countries, and have shown, that if we make them this con· cession, our right of remonstrance against this institution is 15 untouched. But this concession is ungrounded, unjust. The free and slave States arc one nation, and have a very different connexion with one another from their connexion with foreign communities. Slavery is not the affair of a part only, but of the whole. The free States are concerned in it, and of necessity act on it and arc acted on by it. We of the North sustain intimate relations to slavery, which make us partakers of its guilt, and which, of course, bind us to use every lawful means for its subversion. This I shall attempt to establish. If we look first at the District of Columbia, we have a proof, how deeply the free States arc implicated by their contact with the slavcholding. I do not refer now to the reproach fixed on the whole people, by the open, allowed existence of bondage at the seat of government. This is evil enough, especially if we add, that the District of Columbia, besides this contamination, is one of the chief slavew markets in the country; so that strangers, foreign ministers, men whose reports of us determine our rank in the civil· ized world, associate with us the enormities of the slavetrade and of slave auctions as among our chief distinctions. This is bad enough for a community which has any respect for character. But there is a greater evil. The District of Columbia fastens on the whole nation the guilt of slavehold· ing. We at the North uphold it as truly as the South. That district belongs to no state, but to the nation. It is governed by the nation, and with as ample powers as are possessed by any State government. Its laws and institutions exist through the national will. Every legal act owes its authority to Congress. Of consequence, the slavery of the District is upheld by the nation. Not a slave is sold or whipped there, but by the sanction of the whole people. The slave code of the District admits of mitigations ; and this code remains unmodified through the national will. The guilt of the institution thus lies at the door of every |
