Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/517

 Jersey aforesaid, that inasmuch as congress have a clear right to refuse the admission of a territory into the Union, by the terms of the constitution, they ought, in the present case, to exercise that absolute discretion in order to preserve the political rights of the several existing states, and prevent the great national disgrace and multiplied mischiefs which must ensue from conceding it, as a matter of right, in the immense territories yet to claim admission into the Union, beyond the Mississippi, that they may tolerate slavery.

"6. Resolved, (with the concurrence of council), That the governor of this state be requested to transmit a copy of the foregoing resolutions to each of the senators and representatives of this state in the congress of the United States."

The following preamble and resolutions were unanimously adopted in the legislature of Pennsylvania, Dec. 16, 1819:

"The senate and house of representatives of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, while they cherish the right of the individual states to express their opinion upon all public measures proposed in the congress of the Union, are aware that its usefulness must in a great degree depend upon the discretion with which it is exercised; they believe that the right ought not to be resorted to upon trivial subjects or unimportant occasions; but they are also persuaded that there are moments when the neglect to exercise it would be a dereliction of public duty.

"Such an occasion, as in their judgment demands the frank expression of the sentiments of Pennsylvania, is now presented. A measure was ardently supported in the last congress of the United States, and will probably be as earnestly urged during the existing session of that body, which has a palpable tendency to impair the political relations of the several states; which is calculated to mar the social happiness of the present and future generations; which, if adopted, would impede the march of humanity and freedom through the world; and would transfer from a misguided ancestry an odious stain and fix it indelibly upon the present race — a measure, in brief, which proposes to spread the crimes and cruelties of slavery from the banks of the Mississippi to the shores of the Pacific. When a measure of this character is seriously advocated in the republican congress of America, in the nineteenth century, the several states are invoked by the duty which they owe to the Deity, by the veneration which they entertain for the memory of the founders of the republic, and by a tender regard for posterity, to protest against its adoption, to refuse to covenant with crime, and to limit the range of an evil that already hangs in awful boding over so large a portion of the Union.

"Nor can such a protest be entered by any state with greater propriety than by Pennsylvania. This commonwealth has as sacredly respected the rights of other states as it has been careful of its own; it has been the invariable aim of the people of Pennsylvania to extend to the universe, by their example, the unadulterated blessings of civil and religious freedom; and it is their pride that they have been at all times the practical advocates of those improvements and charities anion": men which are so well calculated to enable them to answer