* * * * * The proposition before you is the most important ever brought into Congress, unless, perhaps, we except the Amendment abolishing Slavery; and to my mind it is the most reprehensible. The sentiment which inspired us to hail the abolition of Slavery with gratitude, as the triumph of justice, should make us reject with indignation a device to crystallize into organic law the disfranchisement of a race. With intense regret I differ from valued friends about me, but I cannot do otherwise. I bespeak in advance their candor, and most cheerfully concede to all from whom I differ the indulgence which I claim for myself. With me there is no alternative. Seeing this proposition as I do, I must speak frankly, as on other occasions, in exposing the crime against Kansas, or the infamy of that enactment which turned the whole North into a hunting-ground where man was the game. The attempt now is on a larger scale, if not more essentially bad. Such a measure, so obnoxious to every argument of reason, justice, and feeling, so perilous to the national peace, and so injurious to the good name of the Republic, must be encountered as a public enemy. There is no language which can adequately depict its character. Thinking of it, I am reminded of words of Chatham, where he held up to undying judgment a barbarous measure of the British Ministry. The Englishman did not hesitate, nor did he tame his words, but exclaimed:-- “I am astonished, shocked, to hear such principles confessed,--to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country,--principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and un-christian.… I call upon your Lordships and the united powers of the State to stamp upon them an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence.” Then, rising to still higher flight, he cried out:-- “My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.”[222]