were laid,
and to be laid, on the table, without further action on them. The
abolitionists were again heard, in behalf of their petitions, before the
proper committee.[A] The result was, the passage of the following
resolutions with only 16 dissenting voices to 378, in the House of
Representatives, and in the Senate with not more than one or two
dissentients on any one of them:--

[Footnote A: The gentleman who had been chairman of the committee the
preceding year, was supposed, in consequence of the change in public
opinion in relation to abolitionists, to have injured his political
standing too much, even to be nominated as a candidate for re-election.]

"Whereas, The House of Representatives of the United States, in the
month of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and thirty-seven, did adopt a resolution, whereby it was ordered
that all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers,
relating in any way, or to any extent whatever, to the subject of
slavery, or the abolition of slavery, without being either printed
or referred, should be laid upon the table, and that no further
action whatever should be had thereon; and whereas such a
disposition of petitions, then or thereafter to be received, is a
virtual denial of the right itself; and whereas, by the resolution
aforesaid, which is adopted as a standing rule in the present House
of Representatives, the petitions of a large number of the people of
this commonwealth, praying for the removal of a great social, moral,
and political evil, have been slighted and contemned: therefore,--

Resolved, That the resolution above named is an assumption of power
and authority at variance with the spirit and intent of the
Constitution of the United States, and injurious to the cause of
freedom and free institutions; that it does violence to the
inherent, absolute, and inalienable rights of man; and that it
tends, essentially, to impair those fundamental principles of
natural justice and natural law which are antecedent to any written
constitutions of government, independent of them all, and essential
to the security of freedom in a state.

Resolved, That our Senators and Representatives in Congress, in
maintaining and advocating the right of petition, have entitled
themselves to the cordial approbation of the people of this
commonwealt