Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/77

 WEBSTER further than I have, the general statements of the honorable senator from South Carolina, that the North has prospered at the expense of the South in consequence of the manner of ad- ministering this government, in the collection of its revenues, and so forth. These are disputed topics, and I have no inclination to enter into them. But I will allude to other complaints of the South, and especially to one which has, in my opinion, just foundation ; and that is, that there has been found at the North, among individuals and among legislators, a disinclination to per- form fully their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service who have escaped into the free States. In that re- spect, the South, in my judgment, is right, and the North is wrong. Every member of every Northern Legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the Con- stitution of the United States; and the article of the Constitution which says to these States that they shall deliver up fugitives from ser- vice, is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article. No man fulfils his duty in any Legislature who sets himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes from this constitutional obliga- tion. I have always thought that the Consti- tution addressed itself to the Legislatures of the States or to the States themselves. It says that those persons escaping to other States '* shall be delivered up, ' ' and I confess I have always been 67 cudbU.^