Mr. Mills, of Massachusetts, said that "the right of petition was a sacred one, and belonged equally to the meanest and the greatest citizen in the nation; and if such a petition as this, implicating the conduct of the Executive, had been presented from the meanest citizen, he would receive it; and if it complained of grievances without pointing out redress, it would be the duty of the House to give the proper redness; but it was to our own citizens only he would turn this listening ear. What right had a foreign subject to petition this House?"
Sir, I have incidentally touched upon the argument of precedents, and shown how untenable it is; but I care not if there were a thousand precedents of refusal to receive petitions. Such a fact, if it existed, would not abate my zeal on this point, or shift, in the minutest degree, my position. Upon the Constitution, upon the pre-existing legal rights of the People, as understood in this country and in England, I have argued that this House is bound to revive the Petition under debate. It is impossible, in my mind, to distinguish between the refusal to receive a petition, or its summary rejection by some general order, and the denial of the right of petition. I have no such microscopic eye as to enable me to discern the point of difference between the two things. This procedure may be keeping the word to the ear, but it is breaking it to the sense: and I go upon general, abstract, original, fundamental principle, the great principle of democratic liberty, which is the foundation stone of this Republic. It is for the sacred and inalienable rights of the People that I here contend. I should regard the exclusion of petitions from the consideration of the House as a highhanded invasion of the imprescriptible rights of the Constituency of the country, of whom we are the representatives, not the dictators; and it is for that reason I take my stand against it on the very threshold.
Sir, I am a republican; and I desire to see this House observe the principles of that democracy which is ever on the lips of its members, and which, I hope, is in their hearts, as I know and feel it is in mine, and mean it shall be in my conduct. This Republic was called into being, organized, and is upheld, by a great political doctrine. That doctrine is, that the People alone are supreme; that they are the fountains of power; that all magistrates are the delegated agents of the People, for the purposes limited and prescribed in their letters of appointment, and the general laws of the land; that the constituents of a member of this House have the right to give instructions to him individually; and that every individual one of the People has a right to be heard by petition on the floor of this House. These are among the things which I understand to constitute the principles of democracy: those general principles, which I learned in my boyhood with my catechism, in the bill of rights prefixed to the constitution of my own State; which, on maturer study, I have seen to be avowed more or less distinctly, in all the constitutions of this Republic, and of each of its constituent Republics; which I perceive to be defended and applauded in the writings of the great text authors of political science in modern times; and which after being for the first time practically exemplified in our own institutions, have gone forth over the universe, toppling down thrones, and raising up freemen, through all the nations of Christendom.
And whilst I feel impelled by such convictions to resist the summary rejection of this Petition upon principle, I am irresistibly led to the same conclusion by considerations of policy and expediency. I deny that such considerations should decide the question; but seeing they have been urged into it, I shall concede to them all due respect.
We have been told that the prayer of the Petition is for a thing which the Constitution does not permit to Congress, and so the petition itself should not be received. I ask of the House how it appears that we have no right by the Constitution to legislate upon the subject matter of the Petition? It may be so; and it may not. One member of the House has earnestly averred that it is; another that it is not. Which of them is right? I confess, for myself, that I cannot think it becomes the House to decide either way, upon the mere ipse dixit of individual members. Besides, the Petition calls in question not only slavery, but also the commerce in slaves. And will any gentleman affirm that the slave trade of the District is among those holy things which Congress may not constitutionally handle? Is this District set apart by the Constitution, under whatever changes of opinion or fact the progress of civilization may introduce, to be unchangeably and forever a general slave market for the rest of the Union? I confess that I, again, am disappointed in that, among all the confident things said in denial of the constitutional powers of Congress in this matter, there has not been, so far as I remember, any systematic argument on the perfectly distinct branches of the double constitutional question involved in it, namely, the slave property, and the slave traffic, of this District. And what shall be said of our constitutional power in the purchased Territories, under the jurisdiction of the United States, to which some of these petitions apply? And what clause of the Constitution restricts the right of Petition to constitutional things? This House cannot grant beyond its powers; these are limited by the Constitution; but the People may petition for any thing; for the right of petition is, by the constitution, secured forever against any and every limitation or restriction.
But then it is said that the subject-matter of the Petition does not admit of debate; that the deliberate consideration of it, and the decision of it in the ordinary course of business, would be fraught with disastrous consequences to the peace of the South, and the general tranquillity of the Union. Deeming this argument of more weight than the other, I will give to it more careful attention; especially as, on this point, gentlemen have appealed with great force of language to the patriotic consideration of the North.
In the first place, I aver that I, and those with whom I have acted or voted, did not seek debate on this subject. We felt anxious, almost universally, to avoid it. The members from Massachusetts, at least, have not invited, and, until it had been under discussion among other gentlemen for a whole month, they scarcely participated in, the agitation of the subject in this House. We sat here week after Week, submitting, for the sake of public peace, to hear in silence the harshest reflections upon our constituents; and listening, with surprised curiosity, to the strangest legal and political heresies, uttered as confidently as if they were gospel truths communicated by divine inspiration. One of my colleagues (Mr. ADAMS) did, indeed, beseech gentlemen not to provoke him to a discussion of the subject; and thus it went on, untouched by us, until another of my colleagues (Mr. HOAR) could no longer abstain from the temperate defence of the Constitution and of his fellow-citizens.
In the second place, I do devoutly believe that gentlemen misjudge, if they suppose that agitation out of doors is to be arrested by the quashing of these petitions on their very introduction to this House. With my whole heart I accord in the view of the subject taken some time since by an honorable gentleman from New York, (Mr. HUNT,) and which I know is taken by one of the wisest and most trusted of the statesmen of Virginia, now a member of the other branch of Congress. If there be any plausible reason for supposing that we have the right to legislate on the slave interests of the District, you cannot put down the investigation of the subject out of doors, by refusing to receive petitions. On the contrary, you give the petitioners new force and efficiency, by giving them a new cause of complaint and of excitement. Nor do you attain any thing, so far as this House is concerned; for, by shutting out petitions, you do not shut out debate; any member of the House can bring on debate any day, by moving some general resolution applicable to the subject. On the other hand, if it be so certain that Congress have no power in this matter, or having power, ought not to exercise it, then let the House establish those points in the usual way, by a deliberate report, elaborated in the closet, by a committee of the ablest men upon this floor, and considerately adopted by the House. The argument by which this course is withstood, goes upon a false assumption. It assumes for granted, that the People of the United States are not to be reasoned with; that their opinions can be put down by bold and broad assertions at this or the other end of the Capitol; and that they are not to be trusted with the facts and law of the case. Here, again, as I conceive, gentlemen forget that this government is a republican one, resting exclusively in the intelligence and virtue of the People. I, for one, am willing they should look into any of the clauses of the Constitution, and be fully informed of the merits of every question arising under it, never doubting that, in the end, their decision upon it will be just, true, and patriotic. Or is it that gentlemen are afraid to meet a proper scrutiny of the subject? Do they shrink from a fair and full examination of its merits or demerits?
Sir, allusion has been made, in an early stage of this debate, to the history of the excitement which once pervaded a considerable part of the country, in reference to the transportation of the mails on the Lord's day. It is undoubtedly a pregnant case, directly in point. But I have another case, yet more cogent and pertinent.
Within less than one year after the adoption of the Constitution, there came to Congress petitions, chiefly from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and especially from the Society of Friends, praying Congress to suppress the slave trade, and to interpose, in various ways, within the limits of the several States, in the melioration of the condition of the colored population of the South. I have examined the journals giving the record of the proceedings in this House; I have looked into the history of the times, to understand the grounds of the disposition then made of those petitions. In the outset, I will observe, that the debates on the subject present a remarkable parallel with what has taken place under my own eyes in this House. Messrs. Jackson, Baldwin, Tucker, Smith, and some other gentlemen from the South, insisted, as we now hear it insisted, that the petitions should be summarily rejected, without commitment. They alleged the same reasons; such as unconstitutional object, and pernicious effects of the discussion upon the interests of the slaveholding States. One gentleman did, I believe, what I suppose would hardly be done at this day, entering into an elaborate vindication of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But there was one most eminent and most patriotic member of that House, a man as calm in judging as he was deliberate in acting; who had himself been instrumental among the first in laying the foundation of this Union; who since then has successively filled the highest stations which the laws of his country acknowledge; and who yet lives, in a venerable old age, to receive the admiration of his countrymen, and to enjoy the rare felicity of surviving, as it were, a witness of the honors bestowed upon him by posterity. Sero redeat in coelum. Long may it be ere he depart from among us, to take his place among the great and glorious of other times. Sir, the House well anticipate that I have in my eye JAMES MADISON the younger, who stood forth to pour upon the troubled waves of that day the oil of peace and gladness. God grant there may yet be found among his patriotic countryman, some good and great man—a better and a greater there cannot be—now to perform the self-same office for the Republic.