ject intended.

It is proper to speak out. If this question is left to itself,
unresisted by us, it cannot but terminate fatally to us. Our safety and
honor are in the opposite direction--to take the highest ground, and
maintain it resolutely. The North will always take position below us, be
ours high or low. They will yield all that we will and something more.
If we go for rejection, they will at first insist on receiving, on the
ground of respect for petition. If we yield that point and receive
petitions, they will go for reference, on the ground that it is absurd
to receive and not to act--as it truly is. If we go for that, they will
insist on reporting and discussing; and if that, the next step will be
to make concession--to yield the point of abolition in this District;
and so on till the whole process is consummated, each succeeding step
proving more easy than its predecessor. The reason is obvious. The
abolitionists understand their game. They throw their votes to the party
most disposed to favor them. Now, sir, in the hot contest of party in
the Northern section, on which the ascendency in their several States
and the general government may depend, all the passions are roused to
the greatest height in the violent struggle, and aid sought in every
quarter. They would forget us in the heat of battle; yes, the success of
the election, for the time, would be more important than our safety;
unless we by our determined stand on our rights cause our weight to be
felt, and satisfy both parties that they have nothing to gain by
courting those who aim at our destruction. _As far as this government is
concerned, that is our only remedy._ If we yield that, if we lower our
stand to permit partisans to woo the aid of those who are striking at
our interests, we shall commence a descent in which there is no
stopping-place short of total abolition, and with it our destruction.

A word in answer to the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Webster]. He
attempted to show that the right of petition was peculiar to free
governments. So far is the assertion from being true, that it is more
appropriately the right of despotic governments; and the more so, the
more absolute and austere. So far from being peculiar or congenial to
free popular States, it degenerates under them, necessarily, into an
instrument, not of redress for the grievances of the petitioners, but as
has been remarked, of assault on the rights of others, as in this case.
T