Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/165

Rh could not remain silent himself. While insisting that no petition hostile to slavery should be received and discussed by the Senate, he invited the discussion of the subject by offering a series of resolutions which set forth his theory of the relations between slavery and the Union. They affirmed that the several states entered the Union as independent and sovereign states, with the view to “increased security against all dangers, domestic as well as foreign;” that “any intermeddling of any one or more states, or a combination of their citizens, with the domestic institutions or police of the others, on any ground, political, moral, or religious,” was unconstitutional, insulting, and tending to destroy the Union; that the general government was instituted by the several states as “a common agent” to use the powers delegated to it to give “increased stability and security to the domestic institutions of the states,” and to resist all attempts to attack, weaken, or destroy them; that slavery was an important part of the domestic institutions referred to; that the intermeddling to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia or in any of the territories, under the pretext that slavery was “immoral or sinful,” would be “a dangerous attack on the institutions of all the slave-holding states;” and, finally, that resistance to annexation of new slave territory (pointing at Texas), on the assumption that slavery was “immoral, or sinful, or otherwise obnoxious,” would be contrary to the equality of rights and advan-