8
mighty arch, which by its concentrated strength is able to sustain our social superstructure, consists in the black marble block " of African Slavery. Knock that out," he says, and the mighty fabric,
with
all that it
upholds, topples and tumbles to
its fall."
And
his These were his very words, uttered in debate here. Slavery colleague, [Mr. Mason,] who has never hesitated where was in question, has proclaimed that it is " ennobling to both master and slave"— a word which, so far as the slave was con-
cerned, he changed, on a subsequent day, to " elevating/' assuming still that it is "ennobling" to the master which is sim-
—
ply a new version of an old assumption, by Mr. McDuffie, of South-Carolina, that " Slavery supersedes the necessity of an order of nobility." the claim ma.de for Slavery, which of civilization as if its existform is with the first principles of inconsistent plainly not ence were except by that figure Civilization called can be that thing any of speech in classical literature, where a thing takes its name from something which it has not, as the dreadful Fates were
Thus, by various voices,
is
—
put forward defiantly as a
—
were without mercy. And pardon the allusion, if I add, that, listening to these sounding words for Slavery, I am reminded of the kindred extravagance related by that remarkable traveler in China, the late Abbe Hue,
called merciful because they
of a gloomy hole in which he was lodged, pestered by mosquitoes and exhaling noisome vapors, where light and air entered only by a single narrow aperture, but styled by Chinese pride the Hotel of the Beatitudes. It is natural that Senators thus insensible to the true charac-
ter of Slavery, should evince
an equal
insensibility to the true
in the claim now This is degrading the energy, unprecedented made, and pressed with the preConstitution, the virtue of that by work of our fathers, of Congresthe reach beyond is placed in man tended property
character of the Constitution.
sional prohibition
the Slave-master
shown
even within Congressional jurisdiction, so that at all times enter the broad outlying Ter-
may
Union with the victims of his oppression, and them by lash and chain. Such are the two assumptions, the first an assumption of fact, and the second an assumption of constitutional law, which are now made without apology or hesitation. I meet them both.
ritories of the
there continue to hold
