_Wilmot Proviso._--To the end that the country and the age may not witness the foul sin of a Republic dedicated to Freedom pouring into vast unsettled lands, as into the veins of an infant, the festering poison of Slavery, destined, as time advances, to show itself only in cancer and leprous disease, we pledge ourselves to unremitting endeavors for the passage of the Wilmot Proviso, or some other form of Congressional enactment prohibiting Slavery in the Territories, without equivocation or compromise of any kind. * * * * * _Opposition to Slavery wherever we are responsible for it._--But we do not content ourselves with opposing this last act of aggression. We go further. Not only from desire to bring the National Government back again to the spirit of the Fathers, but also from deep convictions of morals and religion, is our hostility to Slavery derived. Slavery is wrong; nor can any human legislation elevate into any respectability the blasphemy of tyranny, that man can hold property in his fellow-man. Slavery, we repeat, is wrong, and therefore we cannot sanction it. In these convictions will be found the measure of our duties. Wherever we are responsible for Slavery, we oppose it. Our opposition is coextensive with our responsibility. In the States Slavery is sustained by local law; and although we are compelled to share the stigma upon the fair fame of the country which its presence inflicts, yet it receives no direct sanction at our hands. We are not responsible for it there. The National Government, in which we are represented, is not responsible for it there. The evil is not at our own particular doors. But Slavery everywhere under the Constitution of the United States, everywhere under the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government, everywhere under the national flag, is at our own particular doors. The freemen of the North are responsible for it equally with the traffickers in flesh who haunt the shambles of the South. Nor will this responsibility cease, so long as Slavery continues to exist in the District of Columbia, in any Territories of the United States, or anywhere on the high seas, beneath the protecting flag of the Republic. The fetters of every slave within these jurisdictions are bound and clasped by the votes of Massachusetts. Their chains, as they clank, seem to say, "Massachusetts does this outrage." * * * * * _Divorce of the National Government from Slavery._--This must not be any longer. Let the word go forth, that the National Government shall be divorced from all support of Slavery, and shall never hereafter sanction it. So doing, it will be brought back to the condition and character which it enjoyed at the adoption of the Constitution. * * * * *