And this accumulation of wickedness, cruelty and baseness, is to render the seat of the federal government the scoff of tyrants and the reproach of freemen FOREVER!  On the 9th of January 1829, the House of Representatives passed the following vote. “Resolved, that the committee of the District of Columbia be instructed to inquire into the expediency of providing by law, for the gradual abolition of Slavery in the District, in such manner that no individual shall be injured thereby.”  Never again while the present rule of order is in force, can similar instructions be given to a committee—­never again shall even an inquiry be made into the expediency of abolishing slavery and the slave-trade in the District.  What stronger evidence can we have, of the growing and spreading corruption caused by slavery, than that one hundred and seventeen republican legislators professed believers in Christianity—­many of them from the North, aye even from the land of the Pilgrims, should strive to render such curses PERPETUAL!

The flagitiousness of this resolution is aggravated if possible by the arbitrary means by which its adoption was secured.  No representative of the People was permitted to lift up his voice against it—­to plead the commands of the Constitution which is violated—­his own privileges and duties which it contemned—­the rights of his constituents on which it trampled—­the chains of justice and humanity which it impiously outraged.  Its advocates were afraid and ashamed to discuss it, and forbidding debate, they perpetrated in silence the most atrocious act that has ever disgraced an American Legislature[A].  And was no reason whatever, it may be asked, assigned for this bold invasion of our rights, this insult to the sympathies of our common nature?  Yes—­connected with the resolution was a preamble explaining its OBJECT.  Read it, fellow countrymen, and be equally astonished at the impudence of your rulers in avowing such an object, and at their folly in adopting such an expedient to effect it.  The lips of a free people are to be sealed by insult and injury!

[Footnote A:  A debate was allowed on a motion to re-commit the report, for the purpose of preparing a resolution that Congress has no constitutional power to interfere with slavery in the District of Columbia; but when the sense of the House was to be taken on the resolution reported by the committees, all debate was prevented by the previous question.]

“Whereas, it is extremely important and desirable that the AGITATION on this subject should be finally ARRESTED, for the purpose of restoring tranquillity to the public mind, your committee respectfully recommend the following resolution.”

ORDER REIGNS IN WARSAW, were the terms in which the triumph of Russia over the liberties of Poland was announced to the world.  When the right of petition shall be broken down—­when no whisper shalt be heard in Congress in behalf of human rights—­when the press shall be muzzled, and the freedom of speech destroyed by gag-laws, then will the slaveholders announce, that TRANQUILLITY IS RESTORED TO THE PUBLIC MIND!