3.  DENIAL OF THE RIGHT OF PETITION.

We explicitly disclaim all intention to imply that the several disabilities and cruelties we are specifying are of universal application.  The laws of some States in relation to people of color are more wicked than others; and the spirit of persecution is not in every place equally active and malignant.  In none of the free States have these people so many grievances to complain of as in Ohio, and for the honor of our country we rejoice to add, that in no other State in the Union, has their right to petition for a redress of their grievances been denied.

On the 14th January, 1839, a petition for relief from certain legal disabilities, from colored inhabitants of Ohio, was presented to the popular branch of the legislature, and its rejection was moved by George H. Flood.[101] This rejection was not a denial of the prayer, but an expulsion of the petition itself, as an intruder into the house.  “The question presented for our decision,” said one of the members, “is simply this—­Shall human beings, who are bound by every enactment upon our statute book, be permitted to request the legislature to modify or soften the laws under which they live?” To the Grand Sultan, crowded with petitions as he traverses the streets of Constantinople, such a question would seem most strange; but American democrats can exert a tyranny over men who have no votes, utterly unknown to Turkish despotism.  Mr. Flood’s motion was lost by a majority of only four votes; but this triumph of humanity and republicanism was as transient as it was meagre.  The next day, the House, by a large majority, resolved:  “That the blacks and mulattoes who may be residents within this State, have no constitutional right to present their petitions to the General Assembly for any purpose whatsoever, and that any reception of such petitions on the part of the General Assembly is a mere act of privilege or policy, and not imposed by any expressed or implied power of the Constitution.”

[Footnote 101:  It is sometimes interesting to preserve the names of individuals who have perpetrated bold and unusual enormities.]

The phraseology of this resolution is as clumsy as its assertions are base and sophistical.  The meaning intended to be expressed is simply, that the Constitution of Ohio, neither in terms nor by implication, confers on such residents as are negroes or mulattoes, any right to offer a petition to the legislature for any object whatever; nor imposes on that body any obligation to notice such a petition; and whatever attention it may please to bestow upon it, ought to be regarded as an act not of duty, but merely of favor or expediency.  Hence it is obvious, that the principle on which the resolution is founded is, that the reciprocal right and duty of offering and hearing petitions rest solely on constitutional enactment, and not on moral obligation.  The