aw of nature. To maintain my position, that
the Constitution is anti-slavery in its general character, and that
constitutional slavery is, at the most, but an exception to that general
character, it was not necessary to take either of these grounds; though,
had I been disposed to take even the higher of them, I should not have
lacked the countenance of the most weighty authorities. "The law of
nature," says Blackstone, "being coeval with mankind, and dictated by
God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is
binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human
laws are of any validity if contrary to this." The same writer says,
that "The law of nature requires, that man should pursue his own true
and substantial happiness." But that slavery allows this pursuit to its
victims, no one will pretend. "There is a law," says Henry Brougham,
"above all the enactments of human codes. It is the law written by the
finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and
eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood,
they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty phantasy, that
man can hold property in man."

I add no more to what I have said on the subject of slavery in the
District of Columbia, than to ask, as I have done in relation to the
inter-state slave trade and the annexation of slave states, whether
petitions for its abolition argue so great a contempt of the
Constitution, and so entire a recklessness of propriety, as to merit the
treatment which they receive at the hands of Congress. Admitting that
Congress has not the constitutional power to abolish slavery in the
District--admitting that it has not the constitutional power to destroy
what itself has established--admitting, too, that if it has the power,
it ought not to exercise it;--nevertheless, is the case so perfectly
clear, that the petitioners for the measure deserve all the abuse and
odium which their representatives in Congress heap upon them? In a word,
do not the three classes of petitions to which you refer, merit, at the
hands of those representatives, the candid and patient consideration
which, until I read your acknowledgment, that, in relation to these
petitions, "there is no substantial difference between" yourself and
those, who are in favor of thrusting them aside undebated, unconsidered,
and even unread, I always supposed you were willing to have bestowed
on them?