raid and ashamed to discuss it, and
forbidding debate, they perpetrated in silence the most atrocious act
that has ever disgraced an American Legislature[A]. And was no reason
whatever, it may be asked, assigned for this bold invasion of our
rights, this insult to the sympathies of our common nature?
Yes--connected with the resolution was a preamble explaining its OBJECT.
Read it, fellow countrymen, and be equally astonished at the impudence
of your rulers in avowing such an object, and at their folly in adopting
such an expedient to effect it. The lips of a free people are to be
sealed by insult and injury!

[Footnote A: A debate was allowed on a motion to re-commit the report,
for the purpose of preparing a resolution that Congress has no
constitutional power to interfere with slavery in the District of
Columbia; but when the sense of the House was to be taken on the
resolution reported by the committees, all debate was prevented by the
previous question.]

"Whereas, it is extremely important and desirable that the AGITATION on
this subject should be finally ARRESTED, for the purpose of restoring
_tranquillity_ to the public mind, your committee respectfully recommend
the following resolution."

ORDER REIGNS IN WARSAW, were the terms in which the triumph of Russia
over the liberties of Poland was announced to the world. When the right
of petition shall be broken down--when no whisper shalt be heard in
Congress in behalf of human rights--when the press shall be muzzled, and
the freedom of speech destroyed by gag-laws, then will the slaveholders
announce, that TRANQUILLITY IS RESTORED TO THE PUBLIC MIND!

Fellow countrymen! is such the tranquillity you desire--is such the
heritage you would leave to your children? Suffer not the present
outrage, by effecting its avowed object, to invite farther aggressions
on your rights. The chairman of the committee boasted that the number of
petitioners the present session, for the abolition of slavery in the
District, was _only_ thirty-four thousand! Let us resolve, we beseech
you, that at the next session the number shall be A MILLION. Perhaps our
one hundred and seventeen representatives will then abandon in despair
their present dangerous and unconstitutional expedient for tranquilizing
the public mind.

The purpose of this address, is not to urge upon you our own views of
the sinfulness of slavery, and the safety of its immediate abolition;
but to call your attention to t