F
SUFFRAGE. We would look to the best interests of the country,
and the _whole_ country, and not legislate for the good of an
Oligarchy, the most arrogant that ever lorded it over an
insulted people. We would have our commercial treaties with
foreign nations regard the interests of the Free states. We
would provide safe, adequate, and permanent markets for the
produce of free labor. And, when reproached with slavery, we
would be able to say to the world, with an open front and a
clear conscience, our General Government has nothing to do with
it, either to promote, to sustain, to defend, to sanction, or to
approve.

"Thus, fellow-citizens, you see our objects. You may now ask, by
what means we hope to attain them. We answer, by POLITICAL
ACTION. What is political action? It is _acting in a manner
appropriate to those objects which we wish to secure through the
agency of the different departments of Government_. * * The
only way in which we can act _constitutionally_, is to go to the
ballot-box, and there, silently and unostentatiously, deposit a
vote for such men as will do what they can to carry out those
principles which we have so much at heart.

* * * * *

"Come, then, men of Pennsylvania, come and join us in this good
work. Join us, to use such moral means as to correct public
sentiment throughout the region where slavery exists, and to
impress upon the people of the Free states a manly sense of
their own rights. Join us, to place "just men" in all our public
offices; men whose example a whole people may safely imitate.
Join us to free our General Government from the ignominious
reproach of slavery; to restore to our country those principles
which our fathers so labored to establish; and to hand these
principles down afresh to successive generations. It is the
cause of truth, of humanity, and of God, to which we invite your
aid. It is a cause of which you never need be ashamed. Living,
you may be thankful, and dying, you may be thankful, for having
labored in it. We have, as co-laborers with us, the noblest
allies that man can wish. Within, we have the deepest
convictions of conscience, the clearest deductions of reason;
and, all over the world, wherever man is found, the first, the
most ardent longings of the human soul.