ent? There can be but
one answer to these questions on the part of those who present such
petitions: that the right of such petition is higher and more sacred
than the Constitution and our oaths to preserve and to defend it. To
such monstrous results does the doctrine lead.

Sir, I understand this whole question. The great mass of both parties to
the North are opposed to abolition: the Democrats almost exclusively;
the Whigs less so. Very few are to be found in the ranks of the former;
but many in those of the latter. The only importance that the
abolitionists have is to be found in the fact that their weight may be
felt in elections; and this is no small advantage. The one party is
unwilling to lose their weight, but at the same time unwilling to be
blended with them on the main question; and hence is made this false,
absurd, unconstitutional, and dangerous collateral issue on the right of
petition. Here is the whole secret. They are willing to play the
political game at our hazard, and that of the Constitution and the
Union, for the sake of victory at the elections. But to show still more
clearly how little foundation there is in the character of our
government for the extravagant importance attached to this right, I ask
the Senator what is the true relation between the government and the
people, according to our American conception? Which is principal and
which agent? which the master and which the servant? which the sovereign
and which the subject? There can be no answer. We are but the
agents--the servants. We are not the sovereign. The sovereignty resides
in the people of the States. How little applicable, then, is this
boasted right of petition, under our system, to political questions? Who
ever heard of the principal petitioning his agent--of the master, his
servant--or of the sovereign, his subject? _The very essence of a
petition implies a request from an inferior to a superior._ It is not in
fact a natural growth of our system. It was copied from the British Bill
of Rights, and grew up among a people whose representation was very
imperfect, and where the sovereignty of the people was not recognized at
all. And yet even there, this right so much insisted on here as being
boundless as space, was restricted from the beginning by the very men
who adopted it in the British system, in the very manner which has been
done in the other branch, this session; and to an extent far beyond. The
two Houses of Parliament hav