derness. Under these circumstances, are we bound to be their
field-drivers and pound-keepers any longer? Answer me, people of
Massachusetts! Are you the sons of the men of 1776? Or do you 'lack
gall, to make oppression bitter?'

[Footnote 1: The Hon. Josiah Quincy, while in Congress, always
opposed the annexation of foreign territory to the United States, on
the ground of its unconstitutionality.]

"I have pointed out your burden. I have shown you that it is
insupportable. I shall be asked how we are to get rid of it. It is
not for a private individual to point the path which a State is to
pursue, to cast off an insupportable burden; it belongs to the
constituted authorities of that State. But this I will say, that if
the people of Massachusetts solemnly adopt, as one man, in the
spirit of their fathers, the resolve that they will no longer submit
to this burden, and will call upon the Free States to concur in this
resolution, and carry it into effect, the burden will be cast off;
the fugitive-slave clause will be obliterated, not only without the
dissolution of the Union, but with a newly-acquired strength to the
Union.".

In the spring of 1860, there was a debate on this subject in the
Legislature of New York. In the course of it, Mr. Smith, of
Chatauqua, said:--"How _came_ slavery in this country? It came here
without law; in violation of all law. It came here by force and
violence; by the force of might over right; and it remains here
to-day by no better title. And now we are called upon, by the ruling
power at Washington, not merely to tolerate it, but to legalize it
all over the United States! By the Fugitive Slave Bill, we are
forbidden to shelter or assist the forlornest stranger who ever
appealed for sympathy or aid. We are required by absolute law to
shut out every feeling of compassion for suffering humanity. Fines
and imprisonment impend over us, for exercising one of the holiest
charities of our religion. Virtue and humanity are legislated into
crime. Let us meet the issue like men! Let us assert our utter
abhorrence of all human laws, that compel us to violate the common
law of humanity and justice; and by so acting assert the broad
principles of the Declaration of American Independence, and the
letter and spirit of the Constitution. If the North was as devoted
to the cause of Freedom as the South is to Slavery, our national
troubles would vanish like darkness before the sun. Our country
would then be