A Legislature should be imbued with a free, independent, fearless spirit.  But it cannot be, where discussion is overawed and interdicted, or its boundaries at all contracted.  Wherever slavery reigns, the freedom of discussion is not tolerated:  and whenever slavery exists, there slavery reigns;—­reigns too with that exclusive spirit of Turkish despotism, that, “bears no brother near the throne.”

You agree with President Wayland, that it is as improper for Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, as to create it in some place in the free States, over which it has jurisdiction.  As improper, in the judgment of an eminent statesman, and of a no less eminent divine, to destroy what they both admit to be a system of unrighteousness, as to establish it!  As improper to restrain as to practice, a violation of God’s law!  What will other countries and coming ages think of the politics of our statesmen and the ethics of our divines?

But, besides its immorality, Congress has no Constitutional right to create slavery.  You have not yet presumed to deny positively, that Congress has the right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; and, notwithstanding the intimation in your speech, you will not presume to affirm, that Congress has the Constitutional right to enact laws reducing to, or holding in slavery, the inhabitants of West Point, or any other locality in the free States, over which it has exclusive jurisdiction.  I would here remark, that the law of Congress, which revived the operation of the laws of Virginia and Maryland in the District of Columbia, being, so far as it respects the slave laws of those States, a violation of the Federal Constitution, should be held of no avail towards legalizing slavery in the District—­and the subjects of that slavery, should, consequently, be declared by our Courts unconditionally free.

You will admit that slavery is a system of surpassing injustice:—­but an avowed object of the Constitution is to “establish justice.”  You will admit that it utterly annihilates the liberty of its victims:—­but another of the avowed objects of the Constitution is to “secure the blessings of liberty.”  You will admit, that slavery does, and necessarily must, regard its victims as chattels.  The Constitution, on the contrary, speaks of them as nothing short of persons.  Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a framer of the Federal Constitution, and a member of the first Congress under it, denied that this instrument considers slaves “as a species of property.”  Mr. Madison, in the 54th No. of the Federalist admits, that the Constitution “regards them as inhabitants.”  Many cases might be cited, in which Congress has, in consonance with the Constitution, refused to recognize slaves as property.  It was the expectation, as well as the desire of the framers of the Constitution, that slavery should soon cease to exist is our country; and, but for the laws, which both Congress and the