The gentleman from Connecticut, who first opened this debate, and who, I believe, is not now in his seat, remarked in his speech, that evil, disguised in whatever form it might be, would only produce evil; and therefore you must first lay down a moral code, and no matter what results it apparently leads you to, you must never violate it. Sir, his ancestors told a different tale. They said, in admitting South Carolina and Georgia into the Union, that, although they objected to the slave trade, more good would be accomplished than by prohibiting the slave trade and losing those two States. That is the policy which guided our ancestors; and now, what do we ask? What does the Democratic party ask? Do we ask this Government to legislate slavery into the Territories? We have never made any such demand. We have never _yet_ asked anything of this Government but to let it alone. And I assure you, that New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, voted to perpetuate the slave trade, and to give her citizens the right to engage in it from 1800 to 1808, by that clause in the Constitution which gives the citizens of each State the rights of the citizens of every other State. She relinquished the power which they had to forbid her own citizens from participating in the slave trade, and opened the door to them. That is what your ancestors did in the Constitution under which this Government was formed, and which is the basis of all its legislation. And yet, you can give no legislative encouragement to slavery; you must exclude it wherever you have the power to exclude it, not as a matter of policy--at least that is not the ground upon which you base your action--but because it is a moral wrong, and a crime against humanity. But is that all the legislation in the Constitution about slavery? Why, sir, they inserted a clause in the Constitution authorizing the recapture of fugitive slaves when they entered the sovereign territory of these New England States which have now such an aborrence of the doctrine. As the meaning of that clause has been a subject of dispute, I ask the Clerk to read a short extract from the debates in the Virginia convention which adopted the Constitution, in which Mr. Madison explained the meaning of it. I hope I shall be able to show that we have some first-rate pro-slavery legislation in the Constitution before I get through with this argument. The Clerk read, as follows: