Petition and memorial of David Quinn, asking for the re-establishment of Negro slavery in the United States

Gentlemen:
The undersigned, an American citizen, respectfully petitions your honorable body, and prays that measures may be immediately taken for the re-establishment of Negro slavery in the States from which it has just been ejected, and also for its establishment by law in all the other States and Territories, of our federal Union; and in support of his petition, he herewith submits the following
MEMORIAL.
He is by no means insensible of the opposition he is likely to encounter at the hands of the half-learned, the vain and the vicious; but as the roar of the battle no longer drowns the voice of reason, he expects to be heard, and when heard to be respected, and his policy sooner or later adopted. The tempest, he is also aware, still sweeps on in its old direction; but the bending forest is beginning to rise, light to break, and when it comes, in that serenity which follows the storm, he looks for the calm and candid judgment, not of the vicious, but of the patriotic people of his nation.
At the foundation of all polities there are principles—equality at the basis of democracy, and inequality at the basis of all other systems. But whatever may be the propriety or impropriety of either, all human laws to be wholesome must conform to the laws of nature. From these there can be no variance without harm, therefore is it incumbent on the statesman, who is of necessity a philosopher, to study nature, and to conform all his policy to her demands. Her star is the polar star of all wise legislation, but from it you have turned aside, and inclined your ears to the siren songs of countries beyond the seas until you are transformed into beasts, and become the destroyers of your own kindred and kind. You have joined your enemies in their false cry of liberty —a device invented for your ruin; and in your delusion have assumed, as self-evidently true, propositions which are as self-evidently false. You have assumed a general equality of all the human races, and the equal adaptability of all localities to their propagation and development. These are both false, and in their falsity is to be found the great volume of that disorder which has converted our States into antagonisms, drawn the sword of the father upon the son, sent a million of our young men to untimely graves, and burdened the living with a national debt which is, even now, grinding them into the ground.