"If the inhabitants of this metropolis have taken the warrantable and legal measures to prevent that misfortune, of all others the most to be dreaded, the execution of the Stamp Act, and, as a necessary means of preventing it, have made any spirited applications for opening the custom-houses and courts of justice,—if at the same time they have bore their testimony against outrageous tumults and illegal proceedings, and given any example of the love of peace and good order, next to the consciousness of having done their duty is the satisfaction of meeting with the approbation of any of their fellow-countrymen."[190]
Learn now from the Diary of John Adams the results of this system.
"The year 1765 has been the most remarkable year of my life. That enormous engine, fabricated by the British Parliament, for battering down all the rights and liberties of America,—I mean the Stamp Act,—has raised and spread through the whole continent a spirit that will be recorded to our honor with all future generations. In every Colony, from Georgia to New Hampshire inclusively, the stamp distributors and inspectors have been compelled by the unconquerable rage of the people to renounce their offices. Such and so universal has been the resentment of the people, that every man who has dared to speak in favor of the stamps, or to soften the detestation in which they are held, how great soever his abilities and virtues had been esteemed before, or whatever his fortune, connections, and influence had been, has been seen to sink into universal contempt and ignominy."[191]
The Stamp Act became a dead letter. At the meeting of Parliament numerous petitions were presented, calling for its instant repeal. Franklin, at that time in England, while giving his famous testimony before the House of Commons, was asked whether he thought the people of America would submit to this Act, if "moderated." His brief, emphatic response was: "No, never, unless compelled by force of arms."[192] Chatham, weak with disease, yet mighty in eloquence, exclaimed in ever memorable words: "The gentleman tells us, America is obstinate, America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice, that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.... The Americans have been wronged; they have been driven to madness by injustice.... Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the House what is really my opinion. It is, that the Stamp Act be repealed, absolutely, totally, and immediately."[193] It was repealed. Within less than a year from its original passage, denounced and discredited, it was driven from the Statute Book. In the charnel-house of history, with unclean things of the Past, it now rots. Thither the Slave Act must follow.
Sir, regarding the Stamp Act candidly and cautiously, free from animosities of the time, it is impossible not to see, that, though gravely unconstitutional, it was at most an infringement of civil liberty only, not of personal liberty. There was an unjust tax of a few pence, with the chance of amercement by a single judge without a jury; but by no provision of this Act was the personal liberty of any man assailed. No freeman could be seized under it as a slave. Such an Act, though justly obnoxious to every lover of Constitutional Liberty, cannot be viewed with the feelings of repugnance enkindled by a statute which assails the personal liberty of every man, and under which any freeman may be seized as a slave. Sir, in placing the Stamp Act by the side of the Slave Act, I do injustice to that emanation of British tyranny. Both infringe important rights: one, of property; the other, the vital right of all, which is to other rights as soul to body,—the right of a man to himself. Both are condemned; but their relative condemnation must be measured by their relative characters. As Freedom is more than property, as Man is above the dollar that he earns, as heaven, to which we all aspire, is higher than earth, where every accumulation of wealth must ever remain, so are the rights assailed by an American Congress higher than those once assailed by the British Parliament. And just in this degree must history condemn the Slave Act more than the Stamp Act.
Sir, I might here stop. It is enough, in this place, and on this occasion, to show the unconstitutionality of this enactment. Your duty commences at once. All legislation hostile to the fundamental law of the land should be repealed without delay. But the argument is not yet exhausted. Even if this Act could claim any validity or apology under the Constitution, which it cannot, it lacks that essential support in the Public Conscience of the States, where it is to be enforced, which is the life of all law, and without which any law must become a dead letter.
The Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler) was right, when, at the beginning of the session, he pointedly said that a law which can be enforced only by the bayonet is no law.[194] Sir, it is idle to suppose that an Act of Congress becomes effective merely by compliance with the forms of legislation. Something more is necessary. The Act must be in harmony with the prevailing public sentiment of the community upon which it bears. I do not mean that the cordial support of every man or of every small locality is necessary; but I do mean that the public feelings, the public convictions, the public conscience, must not be touched, wounded, lacerated, by every endeavor to enforce it. With all these it must be so far in harmony, that, like the laws by which property, liberty, and life are guarded, it may be administered by the ordinary process of courts, without jeoparding the public peace or shocking good men. If this be true as a general rule, if the public support and sympathy be essential to the life of all law, this is especially the case in an enactment which concerns the important and sensitive rights of Personal Liberty. In conformity with this principle, the Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1850, by formal resolution, declared with singular unanimity:—
"We hold it to be the duty of Congress to pass such laws only in regard thereto as will be sustained by the public sentiment of the Free States, where such laws are to be enforced."[195]
The duty of consulting these sentiments was recognized by Washington. While President of the United States, towards the close of his administration, he sought to recover a slave who had fled to New Hampshire. His autograph letter to Mr. Whipple, the Collector at Portsmouth, dated at Philadelphia, 28th November, 1796, which I now hold in my hand, and which has never before seen the light, after describing the fugitive, and particularly expressing the desire of "her mistress," Mrs. Washington, for her return, employs the following decisive language:—