Resolved, That this Legislature, regarding the agitation of the question of domestic slavery as having already interrupted the friendly relations which ought to exist between the several states of this Union, and as tending permanently to injure, if not altogether to subvert, the principles of the Union itself; and believing that the good effected by those who excite its discussion in the non-slaveholding states is, under the circumstances of the case, altogether visionary, while the immediate and future evil is great and certain; does hereby express its entire disapprobation of the doctrine upon this subject avowed, and the general measures pursued by such as agitate the question; and does earnestly recommend to them carefully to abstain from all such discussion, and all such measures, as may tend to disturb and irritate the public mind.

The report was laid on the table, whence it was not taken up during the session—­its friends being afraid of a lean majority on its passage; for the alarm had already been taken by many of the members who otherwise would have favored it.  From this time till the election in the succeeding autumn, the subject was much agitated in Massachusetts.  The abolitionists again petitioned the Legislature at its session begun in January, 1837; especially, that it should remonstrate against the resolution of Mr. Hawes, adopted by the House of Representatives in Congress, by which all memorials, &c, in relation to slavery were laid, and to be laid, on the table, without further action on them.  The abolitionists were again heard, in behalf of their petitions, before the proper committee.[A] The result was, the passage of the following resolutions with only 16 dissenting voices to 378, in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate with not more than one or two dissentients on any one of them:—­

[Footnote A:  The gentleman who had been chairman of the committee the preceding year, was supposed, in consequence of the change in public opinion in relation to abolitionists, to have injured his political standing too much, even to be nominated as a candidate for re-election.]

“Whereas, The House of Representatives of the United States, in the month of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven, did adopt a resolution, whereby it was ordered that all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers, relating in any way, or to any extent whatever, to the subject of slavery, or the abolition of slavery, without being either printed or referred, should be laid upon the table, and that no further action whatever should be had thereon; and whereas such a disposition of petitions, then or thereafter to be received, is a virtual denial of the right itself; and whereas, by the resolution aforesaid, which is adopted as a standing rule in the present House of Representatives, the petitions of a large number of the people of this commonwealth, praying for the removal of a great social,