And now, on the eve of an important election in this State, we are assembled to take counsel how best to perform those duties which we owe to our common country. We are to choose eleven Representatives in Congress,--also, Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and members of the Legislature, which last will choose a Senator of the United States, to uphold, for five years ensuing, the principles and honor of Massachusetts. If in these elections you were governed by partialities or prejudices, personal or political, or merely by the exactions of party, I should have nothing to say now, except to dismiss you to the ignoble work. ["_That is it!_" "_Good! good!_"] But I assume that you are ready to renounce these influences, and press forward with single regard to the duties now incumbent. * * * * * Here two questions occur, absorbing all others: _first_, what are our political duties here in Massachusetts at the present time? and, _secondly_, how, and by what agency, shall they be performed? What and how? These are the two questions, of which I shall briefly speak in their order, attempting no elaborate discussion, but aiming to state the case so that it will be intelligible to all who hear me. * * * * * And first, what are our present duties here in Massachusetts? Unfolding these, I need not dwell on the wrong and shame of Slavery, or on the character of the Slave Power--that Oligarchy of Slaveholders--now ruling the Republic. These you understand. And yet there are two outrages, fresh in recollection, which I must not fail to expose, as natural manifestations of Slavery and the Slave Power. One is the repeal of the Prohibition of Slavery in the vast Missouri Territory, now known as Kansas and Nebraska, contrary to time-honored compact and plighted faith. The other is the seizure of Anthony Burns on the free soil of Massachusetts, and his surrender, without judge or jury, to a Slave-Hunter from Virginia, to be thrust back into perpetual bondage. ["_Shame! shame!_"] These outrages cry aloud to Heaven, and to you, people of Massachusetts! [_Sensation._] Their intrinsic wickedness is enhanced by the way in which they were accomplished. Of the first I know something from personal observation; of the latter I am informed only by public report. It is characteristic of the Slave Power not to stick at the means supposed needful in carrying forward its plans; but never, on any occasion, were its assumptions so barefaced and tyrannical as in the passage of the Nebraska Bill.