to relieve us." No more shall
such appeals be made to the national council. What matters it, that the
people of the District are annoyed by the human shambles opened among
them? What matters it, that Congress is "the only body vested by the
American Constitution with power to relieve" them? The compact requires
that no action shall be had on _any_ petition relating to slavery.

The horse or the ox may be protected in the District, by act of
Congress, from the cruelty of its owner; but MAN, created in the image
of God, shall, if his complexion be dark, be abandoned to every outrage.
The negro may be bound alive to the stake in front of the Capitol, as
well as in the streets of St. Louis--his shrieks may resound through the
representative hall--and the stench of his burning body may enter the
nostrils of the law-givers--but no vote may rebuke the abomination--no
law forbid its repetition.

The representatives of the nation may regulate the traffic in sheep and
swine, within the ten miles square; but the SLAVERS of the District may
be laden to suffocation with human cattle--the horrors of the middle
passage may be transcended at the wharves of Alexandria; but Congress
may not limit the size of the cargoes, or provide for the due feeding
and watering the animals composing them!--The District of Columbia is
henceforth to be the only spot on the face of the globe, subjected to a
civilized and Christian police, in which avarice and malice may with
legal impunity inflict on humanity whatever sufferings ingenuity can
devise, or depravity desire.

And this accumulation of wickedness, cruelty and baseness, is to render
the seat of the federal government the scoff of tyrants and the reproach
of freemen FOREVER! On the 9th of January 1829, the House of
Representatives passed the following vote. "_Resolved_, that the
committee of the District of Columbia be instructed to inquire into the
expediency of providing by law, for the gradual abolition of Slavery in
the District, in such manner that no individual shall be injured
thereby." Never again while the present rule of order is in force, can
similar instructions be given to a committee--never again shall even an
inquiry be made into the expediency of abolishing slavery and the
slave-trade in the District. What stronger evidence can we have, of the
growing and spreading corruption caused by slavery, than that one
hundred and seventeen republican legislators professed believers in