"A crisis has arrived in which we must maintain our rights, or surrender them for ever. I speak not to abolitionists alone, but to all who value the liberty our fathers achieved. Do you ask what we have to do with slavery? Let our muzzled presses answer--let the mobs excited against us by the merchants and politicians answer--let the gag laws threatened by our governors and legislatures answer, let the conduct of the National Government answer." THE VOICE OF ADAMS. From the Diary of John Quincy Adams, "the old man eloquent," we make the following extract:-- "It is among the evils of slavery, that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more false and more heartless than this doctrine, which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and induces men endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the Christian religion; that slaves are happy and contented in their condition; that between master and slave there are ties of mutual attachment and affection; that the virtues of the master are refined and exalted by the degradation of the slave, while at the same time they vent execrations upon the slave-trade, curse Britain for having given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes, for the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color." THE VOICE OF WEBSTER. In a speech which he delivered at Niblo's Garden, in the city of New-York, on the 15th of March, 1847, Daniel Webster, the great Expounder of the Constitution, said:-- "On the general question of slavery, a great part of the community is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted attention as a question of politics, but it has struck a far deeper one ahead. It has arrested the religious feeling of the country, it has taken strong hold on the consciences of men. He is a rash man, indeed, and little conversant with human nature, and especially has he an erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, who supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised. It will assuredly cause itself to be respected. But to endeavor to coin it into silver, or retain its free expression, to seek to compress and confine it, warm as it is, and more heated as such endeavors would inevitably render it--should this be attempted, I know nothing, even in the Constitution or Union itself, which might not be endangered by the explosion which might follow." When discussing the Oregon Bill in 1848, he said:--