benefits.  They know, that they have no better right to complain, that the legislation of Congress is not dictated by a primary regard to their interests, than has the Colonization Society, of which you are President, to complain, that the Capitol, in which it holds its annual meetings, is not constructed and fitted up in the best possible manner for such occasions.  They know, that to sacrifice the design and main object of that building to its occasional and incidental uses, would be an absurdity no greater than would Congress be guilty of in shaping its legislation to the views of the thirty thousand white inhabitants of the District of Columbia, at the expense of neglecting the will and interests of the nation.

You feel, that there is no hazard in your admission, that the paramount object in relation to the District of Columbia, is its suitableness for a seat of Government, since you accompany that admission with the denial, that the presence of slavery interferes with such suitableness.  But is it not a matter of deep regret, that the place, in which our national laws are made—­that the place from which the sentiment and fashion of the whole country derive so much of their tone and direction—­should cherish a system, which you have often admitted, is at war with the first principles of our religion and civil polity;[A] and the influences of which are no less pervading and controlling than corrupting?  Is it not a matter of deep regret, that they, whom other governments send to our own, and to whom, on account of their superior intellect and influence, it is our desire, as it is our duty, to commend our free institutions, should be obliged to learn their lessons of practical republicanism amidst the monuments and abominations of slavery?  Is it no objection to the District of Columbia, as the seat of our Government, that slavery, which concerns the political and moral interests of the nation, more than any other subject coming within the range of legislation, is not allowed to be discussed there—­either within or without the Halls of Congress?  It is one of the doctrines of slavery, that slavery shall not be discussed.  Some of its advocates are frank enough to avow, as the reason for this prohibition, that slavery cannot bear to be discussed.  In your speech before the American Colonization Society in 1835, to which I have referred, you distinctly take the ground, that slavery is a subject not open to general discussion.  Very far am I from believing, that you would employ, or intentionally countenance violence, to prevent such discussion.  Nevertheless, it is to this doctrine of non-discussion, which you and others put forth, that the North is indebted for her pro-slavery mobs, and the South for her pro-slavery Lynchings.  The declarations of such men as Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, that slavery is a question not to be discussed, are a license to mobs to burn up halls and break up abolition meetings, and destroy abolition presses, and murder abolition editors.