in the District of Columbia—­and likewise to prevent the extension of it to any State, that may be hereafter admitted to the Union?” What then means the following language in the “Declaration” of the Convention, which framed our Constitution:  “We also maintain, that there are at the present time the highest obligations resting upon the people of the Free States to remove slavery by moral and political action, as prescribed in the Constitution of the United States?” If it be for the first time, that we “now propose” “political action,” what means it, that anti-slavery presses have, from year to year, called on abolitionists to remember the slave at the polls?

You are deceived on this point; and the rapid growth of our cause has been the occasion of your deception.  You suppose, because it is only within the last few months, that you have heard of abolitionists in this country carrying their cause to “the ballot box,” that it is only within the last few months that they have done so.  But, in point of fact, some of them have done so for several years.  It was not, however, until the last year or two, when the number of abolitionists had become considerable, and their hope of producing an impression on the Elections proportionately strong, that many of them were seen bringing their abolition principles to the “ballot-box.”  Nor was it until the Elections of the last Autumn, that abolition action at “the ballot-box” had become so extensive, as to apprise the Nation, that it is a principle with abolitionists to “remember” in one place as well as in another—­at the polls as well as in the closet—­“them that are in bonds.”  The fact that, at the last State Election, there were three or four hundred abolition votes given in the County in which I reside, is no more real because of its wide spread interest, than the comparatively unheard of fact, that about one hundred such votes were given the year before.  By the way, when I hear complaints of abolition action at the “ballot-box,” I can hardly refrain from believing, that they are made ironically.  When I hear complaints, that the abolitionists of this State rallied, as such, at the last State Election, I cannot easily avoid suspecting, that the purpose of such complaints is the malicious one of reviving in our breasts the truly stinging and shame-filling recollection, that some five-sixths of the voters in our ranks, either openly apostatized from our principles, or took it into their heads, that the better way to vote for the slave and the anti-slavery cause was to vote for their respective political parties.  You would be less afraid of the abolitionists, if I should tell you that more than ten thousand of them in this State voted at the last State Election, for candidates for law makers, who were openly in favor of the law of this State, which creates slavery, and of other laws, which countenance and uphold it.  And you would owe me for one of your heartiest laughs, were I to tell you, that there are abolitionists—­professed