The People and the Commonwealth, of Virginia reasoned differently from this; and I will not stop to argue whether they did or did not reason more wisely than Massachusetts. They said, We choose to leave nothing doubtful which language can render certain, in a matter of so much moment. We are laying the foundations of a government, which we hope may outlast the Pyramids. We know, from old experience, that the depositaries of the popular power are ingenious in the finding of glosses and interpretations to abstract from the popular rights. Let us see to it that this constitution contain such express recognitions of the rights of the People as it shall be impossible to misunderstand. We will write, upon its very front the great doctrines of liberty in characters of light, which, like the burning letters in the banqueting-hall of Belshazzar, may blast the eye-balls of whomever shall meditate treason to the democratic rights we have conquered with our blood and our fortunes. Accordingly, the convention of Virginia proposed, to amend the Constitution by inserting therein the following, among other clauses:
"That all power is naturally vested in, and consequently derived from, the People; that magistrates, therefore, are their trustees and agents, and at all times amenable to them."
"That the People have a right peaceably to assemble together to consult for the common good, or to instruct their representatives; and that every freeman has a right to petition the Legislature for redress of grievances."
New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island proposed, either literally or in substance, the same provision; and the consequence was, the addition to the constitution of the article, which I am now discussing, on the right of conscience, speech, and petition. And, such being the history of this clause, I look to the gentlemen from Virginia especially, constant and honorable as they are in their attachment to constitutional principles at whatever hazard, to go with me in maintaining inviolate this great original right of the People.
But we shall not fully appreciate the force and value of this provision, if we stop at this point of the investigation. The right of petition is an old undoubted household right of the blood of England, which runs in our veins. When we fled from the oppressions of kings and parliaments in Europe, to found this great Republic in America, we brought with us the laws and the liberties, which formed a part of our heritage as Britons. We brought with us the idea and the form of our legislative assemblies, composed of elected representatives of the people; we brought with us the right of petition, as the necessary incident of such institutions. For when, in the whole history of our father-land, has the right of petition ever undergone debate and question? Go back to the old parliamentary rolls, coeval with Magna Charta; peruse the black-letter volumes in which the early laws and practices of the English monarchy are seen to be recorded; and so far as you find a government to exist, you find the right to petition that government existing also as an undeniable franchise and birthright of the humblest in the land. The Normans came over, lance in hand, burning and trampling down every thing before them, and cutting off the Saxon dynasty and the Saxon nobles at the edge of the sword; but the right of petition remained untouched. In all succeeding times, from the day when the barons at Runnymede pledged themselves to deny to no man redress of his grievances, through every vicissitude of revolution and of war, down to the day when our forefathers abandoned their native country, the same right of petition continued without challenge. In the next reign, it is true, that of the misguided Charles I, the king invaded the public liberties; and he expiated the wrong, as he merited, by a felon's death. After the Commonwealth had passed away, came the petition of right, and with it the statute of the 13 Charles II, distinctly recognising the old right of petition, and regulating the mode of its exercise; and again, after the dethronement and exile of James II, the Bill of Rights and the statute of I William and Mary, again recognising and regulating the right of petition as it has been exercised at all times throughout Great Britain.
Now, I ask gentlemen to point me, in all or any of the periods under review, to the precedents of a refusal by Parliament to receive petitions. I invite them to turn over the histories of parliamentary proceeding, and cite me the examples of petitions being thrust out of the House of Commons or of Lords, at the instant of presentation, on the ground that the prayer of the petition ought not to be granted. Will they do it? Can they do it? Is it not perfectly notorious, on the contrary, that every subject is freely admitted to be heard in his petition, provided it be respectful in terms, even although he pray expressly for a downright revolution in the government, as did the thousands of petitioners who thus carried through, in our own time, the great measure of parliamentary reform? And shall the People in republican America, with its written constitution for the protection of the public rights, and by a body of strictly limited powers,—shall the People here be forbidden to do that which they may freely do in the monarchy of England, having no guaranties for the public liberty except laws and prescriptive usages, all of them confessedly at the will of an omnipotent Parliament? Forbid it, reason! Forbid it, justice! Forbid it, liberty! Forbid it the beatified spirits of the revolutionary sages, who watch in heaven over the destinies of the Republic!
Aye, but, say gentlemen, if such things are not done by the representatives of the People in monarchical England, they have been done by their representatives in democratic America. We are told of precedents at home. What are those precedents?
To begin, I throw aside, as wholly inapplicable to the question, or at least as evasive of it, the case of petitions refused on account of disrespectful language towards the persons or the body petitioned. Those constitute a standing exception, independent of the merits of the subject.
The proceedings of this House in 1790, in reference to petitions on the matter of the slave trade, and of slavery in the States, have been cited. It has been said that those petitions were not received. That is a mistake, as any gentleman may satisfy himself by recurrence to the journals of the House. The petitions were received, committed, and debated on report, as I shall have occasion hereafter to state at length.
One other case is cited, that of the petition of Vicente Pazos, agent of New Granada, which, in the year 1818, the House refused to receive. But the printed debates of that day show clearly the ground of rejection. Mr. Forsyth moved that it be not received. "He stated that, as the petitioner was the agent of a foreign power, and applied to Congress as an appellate power over the Executive, he thought it improper that he should be thus heard." And the question was decided upon this single point. I heartily approve the remarks then made by a distinguished statesman, now no more, who at that time represented Massachusetts on this floor.