g to this resolution, slaves might be flayed alive in
the streets of Washington, and no representative of the people could
offer even a resolution for inquiry. And this vile outrage upon
constitutional liberty was avowedly perpetrated "to repress agitation,
to allay excitement, and re-establish harmony and tranquillity among
the various sections of the Union!!"

But this strange opiate did not produce the stupefying effects
anticipated from it. In 1836, the petitioners were only 37,000--the
next session they numbered 110,000. Mr. Hawes, of Ky., now essayed
to restore tranquillity, by gagging the uneasy multitude; but, alas!
at the next Congress, more than 300,000 petitioners carried new
terror to the hearts of the slaveholders. The next anodyne was
prescribed by Mr. Patton, of Va., but its effect was to rouse from
their stupor some of the Northern Legislatures, and to induce them
to denounce his remedy as "a usurpation of power, a violation of the
Constitution, subversive of the fundamental principles of the
government, and at war with the prerogatives of the people."[105] It
was now supposed that the people most be drugged by a _northern_ man,
and _Atherton_ was found a fit instrument for this vile purpose; but
the dose proved only the more nauseous and exciting from the foul
hands by which it was administered.

[Footnote 105: Resolutions of Massachusetts and Connecticut, April and
May, 1838.]

In these various outrages, although all action on the petitions was
prohibited, the papers themselves were received and laid on the table,
and _therefore_ it was contended, that the right of petition had
been preserved inviolate. But the slaveholders, maddened by the
failure of all their devices, and fearing the influence which the
mere sight of thousands and tens of thousands of petitions in behalf
of liberty, would exert, and, taking advantage of the approaching
presidential election to operate upon the selfishness of some
northern members, have succeeded in crushing the right of petition
itself.

That you may be the more sensible, fellow citizens, of the exceeding
profligacy of the late RULE and of its palpable violation of both the
spirit and the letter of the Constitution, which those who voted for
it had sworn to support, suffer us to recall to your recollection a
few historical facts.

The framers of the Federal Constitution supposed the right of
petition too firmly established in the habits and affections of the