hat must be, what has been
your legislation? The numbers of freemen constituting your nation
are much greater than those of the slaveholding States, bond and free.
You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union.
Your influence on the legislation and the administration of the
Government ought to be in the proportion of three to two. But how
stands the fact? Besides the legitimate portion of influence
exercised by the slaveholding States by the measure of their numbers,
here is an intrusive influence in every department, by a
representation, nominally of persons, but really of property,
ostensibly of slaves, but effectively of their masters, overbalancing
your superiority of numbers, adding two-fifths of supplementary
power to the two-fifths fairly secured to them by the compact,
CONTROLLING AND OVERRULING THE WHOLE ACTION OF YOUR GOVERNMENT AND
HOME AND ABROAD, and warping it to the sordid private interest and
oppressive policy of 300,000 owners of slaves.

In the Articles of Confederation, there was no guaranty for the
property of the slaveholder--no double representation of him in the
Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation for the
recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of _government_ came
to be delegated to the Union, the South--that is, South Carolina and
Georgia--refused their subscription to the parchment, till it should
be saturated with the infection of slavery, which no fumigation
could purify, no quarantine could extinguish. The freemen of the
North gave way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the
Constitution of freedom. Its first consequence has been to invert
the first principle of Democracy, that the will of the majority
shall rule the land. By means of the double representation, the
minority command the whole, and a KNOT OF SLAVEHOLDERS GIVE THE LAW
AND PRESCRIBE THE POLICY OF THE COUNTRY.

THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER.

ADDRESS TO THE FRIENDS OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY,
ON THE VIOLATION BY THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OF THE RIGHT OF PETITION AT THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY,
NO. 143 NASSAU STREET.

1840.

This No. contains 1 sheet.--Postage, under 100 miles, 1-1/2 ct.
over 100, 2-1/2 cts. Please Read and circulate.

ADDRESS.

TO THE FRIENDS OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY:--

There was a time, fellow citizens, when the