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Page 15
* * * * *
I would not discourage authorized legislation upon those kindly,
generous, and noble feelings which Providence has given to us for the
best of purposes; but when power to act is under discussion, I will
not look to the end in view, lest I should become indifferent to the
lawfulness of the means. Let us discard from this high constitutional
question all those extrinsic considerations which have been forced
into its discussion. Let us endeavor to approach it with a philosophic
impartiality of temper--with a sincere desire to ascertain the
boundaries of our authority, and a determination to keep our wishes in
subjection to our allegiance to the Constitution.
Slavery, we are told in many a pamphlet, memorial, and speech, with
which the press has lately groaned, is a foul blot upon our otherwise
immaculate reputation. Let this be conceded--yet you are no nearer than
before to the conclusion that you possess power which may deal with
other subjects as effectually as with this. Slavery, we are further
told, with some pomp of metaphor, is a canker at the root of all that
is excellent in this republican empire, a pestilent disease that is
snatching the youthful bloom from its cheek, prostrating its honor and
withering its strength. Be it so--yet if you have power to medicine to
it in the way proposed, and in virtue of the diploma which you claim,
you have also power in the distribution of your political alexipharmics
to present the deadliest drugs to every territory that would become a
State, and bid it drink or remain a colony forever. Slavery, we are also
told, is now "rolling onward with a rapid tide towards the boundless
regions of the West," threatening to doom them to sterility and sorrow,
unless some potent voice can say to it,thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther. Slavery engenders pride and indolence in him who commands, and
inflicts intellectual and moral degradation on him who serves. Slavery,
in fine, is unchristian and abominable. Sir, I shall not stop to deny
that slavery is all this and more; but I shall not think myself the less
authorized to deny that it is for you to stay the course of this dark
torrent, by opposing to it a mound raised up by the labors of this
portentous discretion on the domain of others--a mound which you cannot
erect but through the instrumentality of a trespass of no ordinary
kind--not the comparatively innocent trespass that beats down a few
blades of grass which the first kind sun or the next refreshing shower
may cause to spring again--but that which levels with the ground
the lordliest trees of the forest, and claims immortality for the
destruction which it inflicts.
I shall not, I am sure, be told that I exaggerate this power. It has
been admitted here and elsewhere that I do not. But I want no such
concession. It is manifest that as a discretionary power it is
everything or nothing--that its head is in the clouds, or that it is a
mere figment of enthusiastic speculation--that it has no existence, or
that it is an alarming vortex ready to swallow up all such portions of
the sovereignty of an infant State as you may think fit to cast into
it as preparatory to the introduction into the union of the miserable
residue. No man can contradict me when I say, that if you have this
power, you may squeeze down a new-born sovereign State to the size of a
pigmy, and then taking it between finger and thumb, stick it into some
niche of the Union, and still continue by way of mockery to call it a
State in the sense of the Constitution. You may waste it to a shadow,
and then introduce it into the society of flesh and blood an object of
scorn and derision. You may sweat and reduce it to a thing of skin and
bone, and then place the ominous skeleton beside the ruddy and healthful
members of the Union, that it may have leisure to mourn the lamentable
difference between itself and its companions, to brood over its
disastrous promotion, and to seek in justifiable discontent an
opportunity for separation, and insurrection, and rebellion. What may
you not do by dexterity and perseverance with this terrific power? You
may give to a new State, in the form of terms which it cannot
refuse, (as I shall show you hereafter,) a statute book of a
thousand volumes--providing not for ordinary cases only, but even for
possibilities; you may lay the yoke, no matter whether light or heavy,
upon the necks of the latest posterity; you may send this searching
power into every hamlet for centuries to come, by laws enacted in the
spirit of prophecy, and regulating all those dear relations of domestic
concern which belong to local legislation, and which even local
legislation touches with a delicate and sparing hand. This is the first
inroad. But will it be the last? This provision is but a pioneer for
others of a more desolating aspect. It is that fatal bridge of which
Milton speaks, and when once firmly built, what shall hinder you to pass
it when you please for the purpose of plundering power after power at
the expense of new States, as you will still continue to call them, and
raising up prospective codes irrevocable and immortal, which shall leave
to those States the empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, and convert
them into petty pageants, in themselves contemptible, but rendered
infinitely more so by the contrast of their humble faculties with the
proud and admitted pretensions of those who having doomed them to
the inferiority of vassals, have condescended to take them into their
society and under their protection?
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