If it be practical to relieve the people from an unconstitutional and oppressive statute,--if it be practical to take away a badge of subjugation imposed by slave-masters during a brutal supremacy,--if it be practical to secure the good name of the Republic, still suffering immeasurably from this outrage,--if it be practical, at this moment of our own severe trial, to substitute justice for oppression, and thus secure the favor of Providence,--and, finally, if it be practical to strike at Slavery wherever we can hit it, and to relieve ourselves of all responsibility for this terrible wrong,--then is this measure eminently practical. It is as practical as justice, as practical as humanity, as practical as duty, which cannot be postponed. But, independently of its intrinsic justice, this measure is recommended by an expediency of the highest character. I blush to plead in this way, but the occasion must be my apology. Senators are not aware how much our country suffers in the judgment of civilized nations from that accursed statute, which now for more than ten years has been a byword and hissing among men. Genius in some of its rarest creations has made it known, literature and art in every form have lent themselves to expose it, while the unutterable atrocities it has sanctioned have been carefully gathered together and circulated abroad as testimony against republican institutions. Since the outbreak of the Rebellion this statute has been constantly adduced by our enemies abroad, as showing that we are no better than Jefferson Davis and his slavemonger crew; for Slavery never shows itself worse than in the slave-hunter. Only within a few days there has appeared at New York, published for the fair, a photograph copy of a letter of the late Alexander von Humboldt, containing the following words: “I have the warmest attachment to your beautiful and liberal city, New York, but have earnestly and deeply regretted that Webster, whom I long respected, more than favored that _shameful_ law which still persecuted colored men after they had regained by flight their natural, inborn liberty, of which they had been robbed by Christians.” Humboldt was our friend, but he could not forbear characterizing this statute as “shameful.” Be assured, Sir, it is a burden for the national cause abroad which it ought not to bear. For the sake of our cause, and that it may have new strength in the swelling sympathies of the civilized world, it should be repealed at once, without hesitation.