of
the House; but that decision does not come; it is continually
procrastinated for the sake of considering questions, which, in my
view, are secondary in time and in principle to the question of
reception; and I can no longer consent that these my constituents
shall be held waiting, as it were, at the doors of the Capitol for
admission, when, as I read the Constitution, they have a right to
demand immediate entrance, and to be respectfully received by their
assembled representatives.

I tender to the House, therefore, an alternative. I place this
Petition at their disposal. If they choose to fix absolutely on a
time certain for considering and deciding the question of reception,
so that this shall take precedence of the other debate, they will
then have this day, as usual, for its appropriate business of the
general presentation of petitions. But if they decide, as
heretofore, to lay the question of reception on the table, then I
shall feel myself constrained to take the floor upon another of
these Petitions, and to keep it, as under the late decision of the
House I have a right to do, until I have fully debated the whole
subject-matter. If the effect of this shall be to exclude all other
petitions for the day, I cannot help it. Be the responsibility on
their heads who raise this novel and extraordinary question of
reception, going to the unconstitutional abridgment, as I conceive,
of the great right of petition inherent in the People of the United
States.

[The question, Shall this petition be received? was then, at the
motion of a gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. HAMMOND) laid on the
table; when Mr. CUSHING resumed the floor and said:]

I now present to the House a Petition signed by inhabitants of
Amesbury, in the State of Massachusetts, among the subscribers to
which are persons whom I know and avouch to be citizens of the
United States. They pray for the abolition of slavery and the slave
trade in the District of Columbia, and in the Territories under the
jurisdiction of the United States. I make the preliminary motion
that it be received; and, upon that motion, I proceed to express my
views to the House.

Steering clear of all the inflammable matter intruded into these
debates, gauging myself to the standard of the most absolute
moderation, and resolutely tying down my thoughts to the real point
in issue, what I propose to examine is the single naked question of
the constitutional right of petition, as