Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/515

 two houses of congress that the early and decisive measures adopted by the American government for the abolition of the slave-trade, are among the proudest memorials of our nation's glory. That slavery was ever tolerated in the republic is, as yet, to be attributed to the policy of another government. No imputation, thus far, rests on any portion of the American confederacy. The Missouri territory is a new country. If its extensive and fertile fields shall be opened as ti market for slaves, the government will seem to become a party to a traffic which, in so many acts, through so many years, it has denounced as impolitic, unchristian, inhuman. To enact laws to punish the traffic, and, at the same time, to tempt cupidity and avarice by the allurements of an insatiable market, is inconsistent and irreconcilable. Government, by such a course, would only defeat its own purposes, and render nugatory its own measures. Nor can the laws derive support from the manners of the people, if the power of moral sentiment be weakened by enjoying, under the permission of government, great facilities to commit offenses. The laws of the United States have denounced heavy penalties against the traffic in slaves, because such traffic is deemed unjust and inhuman. We appeal to the spirit of these laws; we appeal to this justice and humanity; we ask whether they ought not to operate, on the present occasion, with all their force? We have a strong feeling of the injustice of any toleration of slavery. Circumstances have entailed it on a portion of our community, which cannot be immediately relieved from it without consequences more injurious than the suffering of the evil. But to permit it in a new country, where yet no habits are formed which render it indispensable, what is it, but to encourage that rapacity, and fraud, and violence, against which we have so long pointed the denunciations of our penal code? What is it, but to tarnish the proud fame of the country? What is it, but to throw suspicion on its good faith, and to render questionable all its professions of regard for the rights of humanity and the liberties of mankind?

"As inhabitants of a free country — as citizens of a great and rising republic — as members of a Christian community — as living in a liberal and enlightened age, and as feeling ourselves called upon by the dictates of religion and humanity, we have presumed to offer our sentiments to congress on this question, with a solicitude for the event far beyond what a common occasion could inspire."

On the 17th January, 1820, the legislature of New York passed the following resolutions unanimously:

", The inhibiting the further extension of slavery in these United States is a subject of deep concern among the people of this state; and whereas, we consider slavery as an evil much to be deplored; and that every constitutional barrier should be interposed to prevent its further extension; and that the constitution of the United States clearly gives congress the right to require of new states, not comprised with the original boundaries of these United States, the prohibition of slavery, as a condition of its admission into the Union: therefore,