[17] See, also, ante, p. [256].

[18] The people settled the question by electing Mr. Mann by a majority over all other candidates.—Publishers.

[19] See ante, p. [237].

SPEECH

Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, February 28, 1851, on the Fugitive Slave Law.

Mr. Chairman;

Some time ago, I prepared a few comments upon those prominent measures of the last session, which have since arrested the attention of all the lovers of constitutional liberty, and of moral and religious men, throughout the civilized world. I am unwilling to suffer the present session to close without expressing the reflections I have formed; because I deem it but a reasonable desire that my opinions should be placed upon the records of the very Congress to whose measures they refer.

Does any one ask what benefit I anticipate from a discussion of this subject at the present moment? I answer, this benefit at least: that of entering a solemn protest against a grievous wrong, and of placing upon the tablets of my country’s history, what I believe to be the views of a vast majority of my constituents, in common with the vast majority of the people of Massachusetts.

Some of those compromise measures are destined to be of great historic importance. They will be drawn into precedent. When, in evil days, further encroachments are meditated against human rights, these old measures will be cited as a sanction for new aggressions; and, in my view, they will always be found broad enough, and bad enough, to cover almost any nameable assault upon human liberty. When bad men want authority for bad deeds, they will only have to go back to the legislation of Congress, in 1850, to find an armory full of the weapons of injustice.

Sir, legislative precedents are formidable things. If created without opposition, and especially if acquiesced in without complaint, they become still more formidable. Now, if there were no other reasons for reviving this subject at the present session of Congress, this alone would be an ample justification,—it forefends the argument from acquiescence.