Mr. President, I have striven to keep within the open field of history and philanthropy, on neutral ground; but you would not forgive me, if, on this occasion, I forbore to adduce the most interesting testimony of Granville Sharp touching that much debated clause in our National Constitution which has been stretched to the surrender of fugitive slaves. Anterior to the Constitution, even during colonial days, he wrote, that any law which orders the arrest or rendition of fugitive slaves, or in any way tends to deprive them of legal protection, is to be deemed "a corruption, null and void in itself"; and at a later period, in an elaborate communication to the Abolition Society of Maryland,--mark, if you please, of slaveholding Maryland,--which was printed and circulated by this society, as "the production of a great and respectable name," calculated to relieve persons "embarrassed by a conflict between their principles and the obligations imposed by unwise and perhaps unconstitutional laws," he exposed the utter "illegality" of Slavery, and especially of "taking up slaves that had escaped from their masters."[166] But, in a remarkable letter to Franklin, dated January 10, 1788,--a short time after the Constitution had left the hands of the Convention, and some months before its final adoption by the people,--and which has never before been adduced, even in the thorough discussion of this question, the undaunted champion, who had not shrunk from conflict with the Chief Justice of England, openly arraigned the National Constitution. Here are his words. "Having been always zealous for the honor of free governments, I am the more sincerely grieved to see the new Federal Constitution stained by the insertion of two most exceptionable clauses: the one in direct opposition to a most humane article, ordained by the first American Congress to be perpetually observed" (referring to the sufferance of the slave-trade till 1808); "and the other, in equal opposition to an express command of the Almighty, 'not to deliver up the servant that has escaped from his master,' &c. _Both clauses, however_, (the 9th section of the 1st article, and the latter part of the 2d section of the 3d [4th] article,) _are so clearly null and void by their iniquity, that it would be even a CRIME to regard them as law_."[167] [166] Letter to the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, (Baltimore, 1793,) pp. 2, 3. [167] Memoirs, p. 253.