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in the other House was equally prepared for its reception : how it was, the next day, arrested in its progress, on the motion of a member who had voted for it, will presently be shown.
The bill was introduced with a high flourish of encomium. A Senator from Ohio undertook to rally his party around it, as the symbol of their principles, and the test of their fidelity to their principles ; and confidently predicted the event, which doubtless he knew was held under the thumbs of himself and his friends ; namely, that on this measure, involving fundamental principles, there would not be found the difference of a hair among his party. Accordingly it was voted to a third reading by the unanimous voice of that party, comprehending all of them then in their places.
We now ask your serious attention to another feature of this bill, practically, perhaps, more mischievous in its design, tendency, and effects, than the attack upon the freedom of elections, and of more fearful import to all the slave-owning States, in common with this city and District, standing in the midst of them, with like interests and subject to like perils. This feature originated with the select committee itself. So far from being asked for or any wise intimated in the petition, we believe there is not one of its signers or promoters, good or bad, who would not, in common with the mass of his fellow citizens, have spurned at it if proposed.
In the existing charter there is a long section (the eighth) conferring many and miscellaneous powers on the Corporation. Among others, a power to draw lotteries; and, above all, very large powers for the institution of an effective police over disorderly and dangerous persons of various descriptions, comprehending slaves by name. The section discriminates with care the different modes in which slaves and free persons, white or black, are to be dealt with and punished. In one part of the section the Corporation is empowered "to restrain and prohibit the nightly and other disorderly meetings of slaves, free negroes, and mulattoes," and to punish the slaves by whipping and imprisonment, the free negroes and mulattoes by pecuniary fines. In a distant and distinct part of the same section, towards its end, is a distinct clause providing for the coporal punishment of slaves for the breach of such municipal ordinances as impose pecuniary fines, unless the master will come forward and pay the fine.
This section is taken up in the new bill, and re-enacted with certain alterations. One of the alterations takes away the power to draw lotteries ; other alterations consist in expunging every provision relating to slaves ; every clause and part of a clause where the word slaves appears is studiously culled and picked out, here and there, throughout the section. In short, upon comparison of the two sections, it appears to demonstration that this was designedly and industriously done by the framer of the new bill.
This would clearly have amounted to a deliberate and express repeal of so much of the now existing character as brings slaves under the cognizance of the municipal police; a repeal of every word in the charter going to recognise the possible existence of any such being as a slave - or any thing like property in a slave - of any difference between a slave and a freeman.
Why, and for what object, was this designed repeal, (evidently designed and industriously elaborated, as it appears,) is the question.
Certainly we must acquit the farmer of the bill, its chairman, and the select committee, of the malignant and horrible design (that is, as a primary and principal design) to expose the people of the city, and all sojourners here, the committee themselves, to the appalling dangers like to ensue from the total exemption of slaves from all supervision and restraint of a conservative police, as this bill would have exempted them ; to give them, b repealing a provision prohibiting and punishing, "nightly and disorderly meetings," a clear license to hold " nightly and disorderly meetings," without any possible control from the municipal police ; whilst the nightly and disorderly meetings of free negroes and mulattoes were still to be prohibited and punished.
What other motive, design, or consequence, then, can be assigned to this most extraordinary procedure ?
Surley no other than such motive or design as the act itself imports; no less consequences could have been intended than such as necessarily or naturally would have followed the act itself.
This repeal, then, would have amounted to a disclaimer or renuncition by Congress of any such condition as slavery, of any such property as slaves : it would have been equivalent to an admission of the most ultra doctrines of the most ultra abolitionists ; and have left the door of Congress wide open for enunciating the theoretical proposition, and giving to it all the effect of law - that slavery cannot, in the nature of things, be established or permitted by any human institutions, however positive, no matter how high or imperative soever the authority whence they are derived : that the force of all human laws, whether fundamental constitutions or ordinary eanctments, all yield to the paramount force of natural and divine law.
No motive or design worse than this need be imputed; none better can possibly be inferred if any motive or design whatever is to be inferred from a solemn, deliberate, and carefully weighed act of legislation.
Here also, fellow-citizens, we leave the facts to speak ; and if what they speak is to be gainsaid, most certainly it must be by other facts, or by a contradicion of these, not by argument.
This bill was passed to a third reading, as we have said, by the unanimous vote of the party, rallied and specially invoked to its support. Among them were several Senators from slaveowning States. These, doubtless, were kept in the dark as to these most dangerous and farreaching implications of the bill they were voting for. It would hae required a minute and critical comparison between the corresponding sections of the existing charter and the bill to discover them; and it may be well supposed they did not give themselves the trouble, in the hurry and confusion of the moment, to institute such a comparison, and had no preconceived suspicions leading them to it. What apology or explanation, if any, they received from their colleagues and associates in the party convoked to the support of the bill, for palming such a measure upon them, we know not.
So it is that, the next day after the passing of the bill to a third reading, a Southern Senator, who had voted for it, renewed a motion, before made by one of the minority without success, to lay it on the table, and there it was laid accordingly. But for this, the bill would have passed; and if there had been time for the amendments necessary to quiet the particular scruples of the Souther Senators, it would still have passed, with all its other and no less enormous transgressions against conscience, and against every principle of natural justice and constitutional right, on its head.
The same Senator who was so sensitive, and justly sensitive, to such vices in the bill as he discovered, and ought to have known from the first, trenched upon the peculiar interests and principles of himself and his State, recoiled not from the summons of party to perpetrate positive injustice upon us, and to trample in the dist all the principles necessary to have invested with any transcendent merit the pride or the patriotism that led him, at the last hour, to recant an inadvertent error against the interests and principles of his own State. The bill, in all other respects, yet hangs over our heads, like a sword suspended by a hair ; and at the next session is doubtless to be again made the touchstone of party strength and predominance, unless rebuked by you in the mean time.
We might go on to point out other provisions in this bill, militating, and we fear designed to militate, against the peace, good order, and prosperity of the city. But with these we must be content to wrestle as we may ; we have designed to trouble you only with such matters as, in point of practical importance, and the value of the principles involved, may well claim the serious regard of the nation.
We deem it unnecessary, fellow-citizens, to say any thing in vindication of our original, inherent, and absolute title to all the privileges of freemen - of Republicans, in a land of law and liberty ; our title to restrain the Government, placed over us, within all the limits proper for freemen and Republicans in a land of law and liberty ; within the strictist limits of the Constitution; within the limitations of the Government from which we were taken when transferred to this ; within the necessary and understood limitations imposed by natural right and universal justice, in cases not reached by any of the positive provisions of a written Constitution. Any contrary noation of the power implied by the grant of " executive legislation" in the Constitution, leads to endless absurdity, or, what is worse, to a virtual dispensation, not only here but everywhere, from all the most indispensable restraints and limitations of power in the same instrument. Could any rational man expect that the selfsame Government could act the despot and tyrant, reign over abject slaves, disenthral itself of all constitutional restraints, in one place, and, in every other place, be the subdued, moderate, and circumscribed creature of the Consitution ; submissive to the reserved rights and authority of the States, fearful of overleaping any consitutional boundary, and sensitve to the will of its constituents ? Then let him expect to see Scripture falsified; to see the Ethiopian change his skin, and the leopard his spots.
let such a man imagine such a state of things at the seat of Government as new-fangled treasons, bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and general warrants; habeas corpus and jury trial taken away; patents of nobility and an established church, with a supression of all dissenters in religion; and all other of the abominations upon which the Constitution has placed the mark of indelible reprobation: then let him think with himself, no matter of what State or Territory he be citizen, which what alacrity and ardor he would match to the overthrow of a Government so seated, no matter how inoffensive its conduct might happen, for the time, to be out of the immediate sphere of its prescriptive tyranny.
Take another hypothesis rather nearer to the matter in hand; liberty of speech and freedom of the press, put down and extinguished at the seat of Government; your local despot shrouded from all observation, within a dark cloud, extending its murky reign ten miles round; impossible to the light of the press; overshadowing poor awe-struck slaves, who dare not utter one word above their breath displeasing to their masters; then say what would be the value of liberty of speech and freedom of the press out of the bounds where they were proscribed, and where alone liberty of speech and freedomof the press can obtain the most necessary materials for their functions to operate on.
No : if there be one place within the wide bounds of this Republic where, more than in any other, the deepest interests of the Union call for the most active spirit of liberty, for the habitual cultivation of the most high-toned and manly independence, that place, above all others, is the Seat of Government.
We have no fear, fello-citizens, of your falling into speculative errors so monsterous; and as little of your failing to perform with good faith the duties dictated by your relations to the Constitution and to us. In that confidence, we, for the present, remit out cause to your hands.
Signed by order of the Convention.
WALTER JONES,
Chairman of the Convention
Henry J. Brent, Secretary.
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