Sir, Congress may now set aside this obligation, repudiate this plighted faith, annul this compact; and some of you, forgetful of the _majesty of honest dealing_, in order to support Slavery, may consider it advantageous to use this power. To all such let me commend a familiar story. An eminent leader in Antiquity, Themistocles, once announced to the Athenian Assembly, that he had a scheme in contemplation, highly beneficial to the State, but which could not be made public. He was thereupon directed to communicate it to Aristides, surnamed the Just, and, if approved by him, to put it in execution. The brief and memorable judgment of Aristides was, that, while nothing could be more advantageous to Athens, nothing could be more unjust; and the Assembly, responding at once, commanded that the project should be abandoned. It appears that it was proposed to burn the combined Greek fleet, then enjoying the security of peace in a neighboring sea, and thus confirm the naval supremacy of Athens.[57] A similar proposition is now brought before the American Senate. You are asked to destroy a safeguard of Freedom, consecrated by solemn compact, under which the country is reposing in the security of peace, and thus confirm the supremacy of Slavery. To this institution and its partisans the proposition may seem advantageous; but nothing can be more unjust. Let the judgment of the Athenian democracy be yours. This is what I have to say upon this head. I now pass to the second branch of the argument. [57] Plutarch, Themistocles. II. Mr. President,--It is not only as an infraction of solemn compact, embodied in ancient law, that I oppose this bill; I arraign it as a flagrant and extravagant departure from the original policy of our fathers, consecrated by their lives, opinions, and acts. [Here Mr. Sumner proceeded to set forth the Antislavery policy at the foundation of the Government,--less fully than in the earlier speech, _Freedom National, Slavery Sectional_, but substantially in the same vein. After alluding to the memorial of Franklin, addressed to the first Congress under the Constitution, he proceeded as follows.] The memorial of Franklin, with other memorials of a similar character, was referred to a Committee, and much debated in the House, which finally sanctioned the following resolution, and directed the same to be entered upon its Journals, namely:-- "That Congress have no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them, within any of the States: _it remaining with the several States alone to provide any regulations therein which humanity and true policy may require_."[58]