There are only three great charters of freedom among Anglo-Saxon peoples: the Magna Charta, which the barons wrung from King John at Runnymede; the Declaration of Independence, which a few colonials threw at the head of an obstinate king; the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln cast into the balance for the Union. The Magna Charta gave freedom to the nobility; the Declaration of Independence brought freedom down to the plain people; the Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln set free the under-man, and proclaimed liberty to the slave and the serf throughout the world. Massachusetts had no small part in the second great charter of liberty. This is attested not only by the signatures of Hancock, the Adams's, Paine, and Gerry to that great document, but here are Boston, Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and a thousand memorials of the Revolution besides. Great indeed as was the part that Massachusetts played in achieving independence, greater still was her share in the Emancipation of the slave. Lincoln himself said that Boston had done more to bring on the war than any other city; and when Emancipation had been achieved he generously credited the result "to the logic and moral power of Garrison and the anti-slavery people." This day, therefore, belongs to Massachusetts. It is a part of her glorious history. Emancipation was but the triumph of Puritan principle--the right of each individual to eat his bread out of the sweat of his own brow or not at all. The history of the abolition of slavery in America could not be written with Massachusetts left out; the history of Massachusetts herself, since the Revolution, would be but a dreary, barren waste without the chapter of her part in the Emancipation. The House does well to pause in its deliberations to commemorate this anniversary. In 1837 your predecessors threw open the old Hall of Representatives to the first meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. A year later, the legislature adopted resolutions against the slave-trade, for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and the prohibition of slavery in the territories.