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NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, NO. 143 NASSAU STREET.
----- 1839.

* * * * * This No. contains 3-1/2 sheets.—­Postage, under 100 miles, 6 cts. over 100, 10 cts.

Please Read and circulate.

LETTER.

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PETERBORO, MARCH 21, 1839.

HON.  HENRY CLAY: 

DEAR SIR,

In the Annual Meeting of the American Colonization Society, held in the Capitol in the city of Washington, December, 1835, you commented on a speech made by myself, the previous autumn.  Your objections to that speech formed the principal subject matter of your remarks.  Does not this fact somewhat mitigate the great presumption of which I feel myself guilty, in undertaking, all unhonored and humble as I am, to review the production of one of the most distinguished statesmen of the age?

Until the appearance of your celebrated speech on the subject of slavery, I had supposed that you cherished a sacred regard for the right of petition.  I now find, that you value it no more highly than they do, who make open war upon it.  Indeed, you admit, that, in relation to this right, “there is no substantial difference between” them and yourself.  Instead of rebuking, you compliment them; and, in saying that “the majority of the Senate” would not “violate the right of petition in any case, in which, according to its judgment, the object of the petition could be safely or properly granted,” you show to what destructive conditions you subject this absolute right.  Your doctrine is, that in those cases, where the object of the petition is such, as the supplicated party can approve, previously to any discussion of its merits—­there, and there only, exists the right of petition.  For aught I see, you are no more to be regarded as the friend of this right, than is the conspicuous gentleman[A] who framed the Report on that subject, which was presented to the Senate of my state the last month.  That gentleman admits the sacredness of “the right to petition on any subject;” and yet, in the same breath, he insists on the equal sacredness of the right to refuse to attend to a petition.  He manifestly failed to bear in mind, that a right to petition implies the correlative right to be heard.  How different are the statesmen, who insist “on the right to refuse to attend to a petition,” from Him, who says, “Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.”  And who are poor, if it be not those for whom the abolitionists cry?  They must even cry by proxy.  For, in the language of John Quincy Adams, the champion of the right of petition, “The slave is not permitted to cry for mercy—­to plead for pardon—­to utter the shriek of perishing nature for relief.”  It may be well to remark, that the error, which I have pointed out in the Report in question, lies in the premises of the principal argument of that paper; and that the correction of this error is necessarily attended with the destruction of the premises, and with the overthrow of the argument, which is built upon them.