addresses of the Massachusetts and American Societies for the last twenty years.  The idea of the antislavery character of the Constitution,—­the opiate with which Free Soil quiets its conscience for voting under a pro-slavery government,—­I heard first suggested by Mr. Garrison in 1838.  It was elaborately argued that year in all our antislavery gatherings, both here and in New York, and sustained with great ability by Alvan Stewart, and in part by T. D. Weld.  The antislavery construction of the Constitution was ably argued in 1836, in the Antislavery Magazine, by Rev. Samuel J. May, one of the very first to seek the side of Mr. Garrison, and pledge to the slave his life and efforts,—­a pledge which thirty years of devoted labors have redeemed.  If it has either merit or truth, they are due to no legal learning recently added to our ranks, but to some of the old and well-known pioneers.  This claim has since received the fullest investigation from Mr. Lysander Spooner, who has urged it with all his unrivalled ingenuity, laborious research, and close logic.  He writes as a lawyer, and has no wish, I believe, to be ranked with any class of anti-slavery men.

The influence of slavery on our Government has received the profoundest philosophical investigation from the pen of Richard Hildreth, in his invaluable essay on Despotism in America,—­a work which deserves a place by the side of the ablest political disquisitions of any age.

Even the vigorous mind of Rantoul, the ablest man, without doubt, of the Democratic party, and perhaps the ripest politician in New England, added little or nothing to the store-house of antislavery argument. * * * His speeches on our question, too short and too few, are remarkable for their compact statement, iron logic, bold denunciation, and the wonderful light thrown back upon our history.  Yet how little do they present which was not familiar for years in our anti-slavery meetings!  Look, too, at the last great effort of the idol of so many thousands,—­Mr. Senator Sumner,—­the discussion of a great national question, of which it has been said that we must go back to Webster’s reply to Hayne, and Fisher Ames on the Jay treaty, to find its equal in Congress,—­praise which we might perhaps qualify, if any adequate report were left us of some of the noble orations of Adams.  No one can be blind to the skilful use he has made of his materials, the consummate ability with which he has marshalled them, and the radiant glow which his genius has thrown over all.  Yet, with the exception of his reference to the antislavery debate in Congress in 1817, there is hardly a train of thought or argument, and no single fact in the whole speech, which has not been familiar in our meetings and essays for the last ten years. * * *