Let us regard the question more closely. Congress is asked to sanction the Constitution of Texas, which not only supports slavery, but contains a clause prohibiting the Legislature of the State from abolishing slavery. In doing this, it will give a fresh stamp of legislative approbation to an unrighteous system; it will assume a new and active responsibility for the system; it will again become a dealer in human flesh, and on a gigantic scale. At this moment, when the conscience of mankind is at last aroused to the enormity of holding a fellow-man in bondage, when, throughout the civilized world, a slave-dealer is a by-word and a reproach, we as a nation are about to become proprietors of a large population of slaves. Such an act, at this time, is removed from the reach of that palliation often extended to slavery. Slavery, we are speciously told by those who defend it, is not our original sin. It was entailed upon us by our ancestors, so we are instructed; and the responsibility is often, with exultation, thrown upon the mother country. Now, without stopping to inquire into the truth of this allegation, it is sufficient for the present purpose to know that by welcoming Texas as a Slave State we make slavery our own original sin. Here is a new case of actual transgression, which we cannot cast upon the shoulders of any progenitors, nor upon any mother country, distant in time or place. The Congress of the United States, the people of the United States, at this day, in this vaunted period of light, will be responsible for it; so that it will be said hereafter, so long as the dreadful history of Slavery is read, that in the present year of Christ a new and deliberate act was passed to confirm and extend it. By the present movement we propose no measure of change. We do not offer to interfere with any institution of the Southern States, nor to modify any law on the subject of Slavery anywhere under the Constitution. Our movement is conservative. It is to preserve existing supports of Freedom; it is to prevent the violation of free institutions in their vital principles. Such a movement should unite in its support all but those few in whose distorted or unnatural vision slavery seems to be a great good. Most clearly should it unite the freemen of the North, by all the considerations of self-interest, and by those higher considerations founded on the rights of man. I cannot dwell now upon the controlling political influence in the councils of the country which the annexation of Texas will secure to slaveholders. This topic is of importance; but it yields to the supreme requirements of religion, morals, and humanity. I cannot banish from my view the great shame and wrong of slavery. Judges of our courts have declared it contrary to the Law of Nature, finding its support only in positive enactments of men. Its horrors who can tell? Language utterly fails to depict them.