There was another single proposition from still another quarter, but, like all the rest, it related exclusively to Slavery. It was to insert in the text of the Constitution a stipulation against any future amendment authorizing Congress to interfere with Slavery in the States. If you read this proposition, you will find it crude and ill-shaped,--a jargon of bad grammar, a jumble and hodge-podge of words,--harmonizing poorly with the accurate text of our Constitution. But even if tolerable in form, it was obnoxious, like the rest, as a fresh stipulation in favor of Slavery. Sufficient, surely, in this respect, is the actual Constitution. Beyond this I cannot I will not go. What Washington, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton would not insert we cannot err in rejecting. [_Applause._] I do not dwell on other propositions, because they attracted less attention; and yet among these was one to overturn the glorious safeguards of Freedom set up in the Free States, known as the Personal Liberty Laws. Here again was Slavery--with a vengeance. There is one remark which I desire to make with regard to all these propositions. It was sometimes said that the concessions they offered were “small.” What a mistake is this! No concession to Slavery can be “small.” Freedom is priceless, and in this simple rule alike of morals and jurisprudence you find the just measure of any concession, how small soever it may seem, by which Freedom is sacrificed. Tell me not that it concerns a few only. I do not forget the saying of Antiquity, that the best government is where an injury to a single individual is resented as an injury to the whole State; nor am I indifferent to that memorable instance of our own recent history, where, in a distant sea, the thunders of our navy, with all the hazards of war, were aroused to protect the liberty of a solitary person claiming the rights of an American citizen. By such examples let me be guided, rather than by the suggestion, that Human Freedom, whether in many or in few, is of so little value that it may be put in the market to appease a traitorous conspiracy, or soothe accessories, who, without such concession, threaten to join the conspirators. Warnings of the past, like the suggestions of reason and of conscience, were all against concession. Timid counsels always are an encouragement to sedition and rebellion. If the glove be of velvet, the hand must be of iron. An eminent master of thought, in some of his most vivid words, has bravely said,-- “To expect to tranquillize and benefit a country by gratifying its agitators would be like the practice of the superstitious of old with their sympathetic powders and ointments, who, instead of applying medicaments to the wound, contented themselves with salving the sword which had inflicted it. Since the days of Dane-gelt downwards, nay, since the world was created, nothing but evil has resulted from concessions made to intimidation.”[217]