f August, and
shows how little we have concurred with Great Britain in her attempts to
break the chain of slavery. He inquires into what we are doing:

"Are we not suffering our own hands to be manacled, and our
own feet to be fettered, with the chains of slavery? Is it not
enough to be told that, by a fraudulent perversion of language in
the constitution of the United States, we have falsified the
constitution itself, by admitting into both the legislative and
executive departments of the government an overwhelming
representation of one species of _property_, to the exclusion of
all others, and that the odious property in slaves?

"Is it not enough that, by this exclusive privilege of property
representation, confined to one section of the country, an
irresistible ascendency in the action of the general government has
been secured, not indeed to that section, but to an oligarchy of
slaveholders in that section--to the cruel oppression of the poor
in that same section itself? Is it not enough that, by the
operation of this radical iniquity in the organization of the
government, an immense disproportion of all offices, from the
highest to the lowest, civil, military, naval, executive, and
judicial, are held by slaveholders? Have we not seen the sacred
right of petition totally suppressed for the people of the free
states during a succession of years, and is it not yet inexorably
suppressed? Have we not seen, for the last twenty years, the
constitution and solemn treaties with foreign nations trampled on
by cruel oppression and lawless imprisonment of colored mariners
in the Southern States, in cold-blooded defiance of a solemn
adjudication by a Southern judge in the Circuit Court of the Union?
And is not this enough? Have not the people of the free states been
required to renounce for their citizens the right of habeas corpus
and trial by jury; and, to coerce that base surrender of the only
practical security to all personal rights, have not the
slave-breeders, by state legislation, subjected to fine and
imprisonment the colored citizens of the free states, for merely
coming within their jurisdiction? Have we not tamely submitted for
years to the daily violation of the freedom of the post-office and
of the press by a committee of seal-breakers? And have we not seen
a sworn Postmast