But this resolution is no less barbarous than it is profligate and impudent.  Remember, fellow countrymen! that the decree has gone forth, that there shall be no legislation by Congress, in any way, or to any extent whatever, on the subject of slavery.  Now call to mind, that Congress is the local and only legislature of the District of Columbia, which is placed by the Constitution under its “exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatsoever.”  In this District, there are thousands of human beings divested of the rights of humanity, and subjected to a negotiable despotism; and Congress is the only power that can extend the shield of law to protect them from cruelty and abuse; and that shield, it is now resolved, shall not be extended in any way, or to any extent!  But this is not all.  The District has become the great slave-market of North America, and the port of Alexandria is the Guinea of our proud republic, whence “cargoes of despair” are continually departing[A].

[Footnote A:  One dealer, John Armfield, advertises in the National Intelligencer of the 10th of February last, that he has three vessels in the trade, and they will leave the port of Alexandria on the first and fifteenth of each month.]

In the city which bears the name of the Father of his country, dealers in human flesh receive licenses for the vile traffic, at four hundred dollars each per annum; and the gazettes of the Capital have their columns polluted with the advertisements of these men, offering cash for children and youth, who, torn from their parents and families, are to wear out their existence on the plantations of the south.[A] For the safe keeping of these children and youth, till they are shipped for the Mississippi, private pens and prisons are provided, and the UNITED STATES’ JAIL used when required.  The laws of the District in relation to slaves and free negroes are of the most abominable and iniquitous character.  Any free citizen with a dark skin, may be arrested on pretence of being a fugitive slave, and committed to the UNITED STATES’ PRISON, and unless within a certain number of days he proves his freedom, while immured within its walls, he is, under authority of Congress, sold as a slave for life.  Do you ask why?  Let the blood mantle in your cheeks, while we give you the answer of the LAW—­“to pay his jail fees!!”

[Footnote A:  Twelve hundred negroes are thus advertised for in the National Intelligencer of the 28th of March last.  The negroes wanted are generally from the age of ten or twelve years to twenty-five, and of both sexes.]

On the 11th of January, 1827, the Committee for the District of Columbia, (themselves slaveholders) introduced a bill providing that the jail fees should hereafter be a county charge.  The bill did not pass; and by the late resolution, a statute unparalleled for injustice and atrocity by any mandate of European despotism, is to be like the law of the Medes and Persians, that altereth not, since no proposition for its repeal or modification can be entertained.