disposition of a petition
after it is received, is another. But the new rule makes no
disposition of the petitions; it PROHIBITS THEIR RECEPTION; they may
not be brought into the legislative chamber. Hundreds of thousands
of the people are debarred all access to their representatives, for
the purpose of offering them a prayer.

It is said that the manifold abominations perpetrated in the District
are no grievances to the petitioners, and _therefore_ they have no
right to ask for their removal. But the right guaranteed by the
Constitution, is a right to ask for the redress of _grievances_,
whether personal, social, or moral. And who, except a slaveholder,
will dare to contend that it is no grievance that our agents, our
representatives, our servants, in our name and by our authority,
enact laws erecting and licensing markets in the Capital of the
Republic, for the sale of human beings, and converting free men into
slaves, for no other crime, than that of being too poor to pay
United States' officers the JAIL FEES accruing from an iniquitous
imprisonment?

Again, it is pretended that the objects prayed for, are palpably
unconstitutional, and that _therefore_ the petitions ought not to be
received. And by what authority are the people deprived of their
right to petition for any object which a majority of either
House of Congress, for the time being, may please to regard as
unconstitutional? If this usurpation be submitted to, it will not be
confined to abolition petitions. It is well known that most of the
slaveholders _now_ insist, that all protecting duties are
unconstitutional, and that on account of the tariff the Union was
nearly rent by the very men who are now horrified by the danger to
which it is exposed by these _petitions_! Should our Northern
Manufacturers again presume to ask Congress to protect them from
foreign competition, the Southern members will find a precedent,
sanctioned by Northern votes, for a rule that "no petition, memorial,
resolution, or other paper, praying for the IMPOSITION OF DUTIES FOR
THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MANUFACTURES, shall be received by the House,
or entertained in any way whatever."

It does indeed, require Southern arrogance, to maintain that,
although Congress is invested by the Constitution with "exclusive
jurisdiction, in all cases whatsoever," over the District of Columbia,
yet that it would be so palpably unconstitutional to abolish the
slave-trade, and to emancipate the sla