I address you, sir, with anxiety and distress of mind, with me, wholly unprecedented.  The friends of this bill seem to consider it as the exercise of a common power; as an ordinary affair; a mere municipal regulation, which they expect to see pass without other questions than those concerning details.  But, sir, the principle of this bill materially affects the liberties and rights of the whole people of the United States.  To me it appears that it would justify a revolution in this country; and that, in no great length of time it may produce it.  When I see the zeal and perseverance with which this bill has been urged along its parliamentary path, when I know the local interests and associated projects which combine to promote its success, all opposition to it seems manifestly unavailing.  I am almost tempted to leave, without a struggle, my country to its fate.  But, sir, while there is life, there is hope.  So long as the fatal shaft has not yet sped, if Heaven so will, the bow may be broken and the vigor of the mischief-meditating arm withered.  If there be a man in this House or nation, who cherishes the Constitution, under which we are assembled, as the chief stay of his hope, as the light which is destined to gladden his own day, and to soften even the gloom of the grave, by the prospects it sheds over his children, I fall not behind him in such sentiments.  I will yield to no man in attachment to this Constitution, in veneration for the sages who laid its foundations, in devotion to those principles which form its cement and constitute its proportions.  What then must be my feelings; what ought to be the feelings of a man, cherishing such sentiments, when he sees an act contemplated which lays ruin at the foot of all these hopes?  When he sees a principle of action about to be usurped, before the operation of which the bands of this Constitution are no more than flax before the fire, or stubble before the whirlwind?  When this bill passes, such an act is done; and such a principle is usurped.

Mr. Speaker, there is a great rule of human conduct, which he who honestly observes, cannot err widely from the path of his sought duty.  It is, to be very scrupulous concerning the principles you select as the test of your rights and obligations; to be very faithful in noticing the result of their application; and to be very fearless in tracing and exposing their immediate effects and distant consequences.  Under the sanction of this rule of conduct, I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion, that, if this bill passes, the bonds of this union are, virtually, dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligations, and that as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare, definitely, for a separation:  amicably, if they can; violently, if they must.

(Mr. Quincy was here called to order by Mr. Poindexter, delegate from the Mississippi territory, for the words in italics.  After it was decided, upon an appeal to the House, that Mr. Quincy was in order, he proceeded.)