uty, as citizens, to maintain that whatever the patriots of
the revolution did, was right; and who hold that we are bound to _do_
all the iniquity that they covenanted for us that we _should_ do. But
the claims of truth and right are paramount to all other claims.

With all our veneration for our constitutional fathers, we must
admit,--for they have left on record their own confession of
it,--that in this part of their work they _intended_ to hold the
shield of their protection over a wrong, knowing that it was a wrong.
They made a "compromise" which they had no right to make--a compromise
of moral principle for the sake of what they probably regarded as
"political expediency." I am sure they did not know--no man could
know, or can now measure, the extent, or the consequences of the wrong
that they were doing. In the strong language of John Quincy Adams,[13]
in relation to the article fixing the basis of representation, "Little
did the members of the Convention, from the free States, imagine or
foresee what a sacrifice to Moloch was hidden under the mask of this
concession."

[Footnote 13: See his Report on the Massachusetts Resolutions.]

I verily believe that, giving all due consideration to the benefits
conferred upon this nation by the Constitution, its national unity,
its swelling masses of wealth, its power, and the external prosperity
of its multiplying millions; yet the _moral_ injury that has been
done, by the countenance shown to slavery by holding over that
tremendous sin the shield of the Constitution, and thus breaking down
in the eyes of the nation the barrier between right and wrong; by so
tenderly cherishing slavery as, in less than the life of man, to
multiply her children from half a million to nearly three millions; by
exacting oaths from those who occupy prominent stations in society,
that they will violate at once the rights of man and the law of God;
by substituting itself as a rule of right, in place of the moral laws
of the universe;--thus in effect, dethroning the Almighty in the
hearts of this people and setting up another sovereign in his
stead--more than outweighs it all. A melancholy and monitory lesson
this, to all time-serving and temporising statesmen! A striking
illustration of the _impolicy_ of sacrificing _right_ to any
considerations of expediency! Yet, what better than the evil effects
that we have seen, could the authors of the Constitution have
reasonably expected, from the sa