and guilt, and execration must be, and
ought to be, the portion of that people calling themselves Christians
and republicans, who can tolerate, through half a century, a
Constitution and a Congress that cannot prevent nor cure the buying
and selling of sacred humanity; the sundering of every fibre that
binds heart to heart, and the dehumanization and butchery of peaceful
and patriotic citizens within the territories over which they extend.
In whatever aspect I view this question, the people, and the whole
people, appear to be, before God and man, responsible, politically and
morally, for the sin of slave-holding. They are responsible for the
Constitution, with any deficiencies and faults it may have, for they
have the power, and it is therefore their duty, to amend it. They are
responsible for the character and acts of Congress, for they make the
senators and representatives that go there. In a word, they are
properly and solemnly responsible for that "system" of which we have
heard so much, and for "the workings of that system;" and I declare it
little better than subterfuge to say, that the people of America, the
source of power, the sovereign, the omnipotent people, are not
responsible for the existence of slavery and all its kindred
abominations, within the territorial limits of the United States.

The charges which he had here made were important, grave and awful. He
made them under the full and solemn impression of his accountableness
to mankind, and the God of nations. He believed them to be true; he
was prepared to substantiate them. That not one tittle of them might
be lost or misrepresented in Great Britain or America, he had penned
them with his own hand, out of his own heart, and he was prepared to
support them in England, or in Scotland, or in America itself: for he
hoped yet again to visit that country, and there resume his advocacy
of the cause of the slave.

He would now come to the colonization question, on which he felt
completely at home. In adverting to this question, however, he
experienced a difficulty, which he had felt on many former occasions,
that of not being able to compress what he had to say within the
compass of one address. He would not only have to reply to what Mr.
Breckinridge had advanced, but he would have to touch on topics which
Mr. Breckinridge had overlooked--principles affecting the origin,
character, and very existence of that society, which Mr. Breckinridge
had taken under