The Post Master General, with the sanction of the President, also hastened to their relief, and, in violation of oaths, and laws, and the constitution, established ten thousand censors of the press, each one of whom was authorized to abstract from the mail every paper which _he_ might think too favorable to the rights of man. For more than twenty years, petitions have been presented to Congress, for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The right to present them, and the power of Congress to grant their prayer, were, until recently, unquestioned. But the rapid multiplication of these petitions alarmed the slaveholders, and, knowing that they tended to keep alive at the North, an interest in the slave, they deemed it good policy to discourage and, if possible, suppress all such applications. Hence Mr. Pinckney's famous resolution, in 1836, declaring, "that all petitions, or papers, relating _in any way, or to any extent_ whatever to the _subject of slavery_, shall, without being printed or referred, be laid on the table; and no further action, whatever shall be had thereon!" The peculiar atrocity of this resolution was, that it not merely trampled upon the rights of the petitioners, but took from each member of the House his undoubted privilege, as a legislator of the District, to introduce any proposition he might think proper, for the protection of the slaves. In every Slave State there are laws affording, at least, some nominal protection to these unhappy beings; but, according to this resolution, slaves might be flayed alive in the streets of Washington, and no representative of the people could offer even a resolution for inquiry. And this vile outrage upon constitutional liberty was avowedly perpetrated "to repress agitation, to allay excitement, and re-establish harmony and tranquillity among the various sections of the Union!!" But this strange opiate did not produce the stupefying effects anticipated from it. In 1836, the petitioners were only 37,000--the next session they numbered 110,000. Mr. Hawes, of Ky., now essayed to restore tranquillity, by gagging the uneasy multitude; but, alas! at the next Congress, more than 300,000 petitioners carried new terror to the hearts of the slaveholders. The next anodyne was prescribed by Mr. Patton, of Va., but its effect was to rouse from their stupor some of the Northern Legislatures, and to induce them to denounce his remedy as "a usurpation of power, a violation of the Constitution, subversive of the fundamental principles of the government, and at war with the prerogatives of the people."[105] It was now supposed that the people most be drugged by a _northern_ man, and _Atherton_ was found a fit instrument for this vile purpose; but the dose proved only the more nauseous and exciting from the foul hands by which it was administered. [Footnote 105: Resolutions of Massachusetts and Connecticut, April and May, 1838.]