"It is meet and right that the stupendous iniquity now about to be perpetrated should be resisted by the true-hearted citizens of that State which, more than any other in the confederacy, has debauched the moral sentiment of the nation and prepared the community for submission to the most insolent usurpation yet attempted by the Slave Power. The present effort to extend the dominion of the whip to the northern limits of the United States is the legitimate consequence of the disastrous and disgraceful concessions of 1850. Those concessions were effected more through the ability and labours of the late distinguished senator from Massachusetts than of any of his coadjutors. Mr. Webster, avowing the entire constitutionality of the Wilmot Proviso and having voted for it in relation to Oregon, objected to its application to the newly conquered territories on the ground that their _Asiatic scenery_ and _geographical conformation_ rendered it _physically impossible_ for negro slavery ever to exist in them. Unhappily for his novel and extraordinary theory, numerous slaves were at the time he spoke held in California.... Slaves are at this day held in New Mexico. "Mr. Webster, in giving his earnest and cordial support to the atrocious Fugitive-Slave Act, candidly acknowledged on the floor of the Senate that in 'his judgment' Congress had no constitutional power to legislate on the subject, the obligation of surrendering fugitives resting on the States. Yet he scrupled not in his subsequent addresses to speak in terms of unmeasured obloquy of every lawyer who presumed to deny the constitutionality of that horrible law. He admitted the right of Congress to grant the fugitive a trial by jury, yet was unwearied in his advocacy of a law denying to the most helpless of mortals that important safeguard of personal liberty.... "The course of this gentleman at a moment when the dearest principles of liberty, justice, and humanity were vehemently assailed was rapturously applauded by the monied, the literary, and the ecclesiastical aristocracy of Massachusetts, and the New England Church has to a great extent canonized his memory. "The ardour evinced by the city of Boston in the surrender of Simms, and the intense servility and degradation accompanying that surrender, together with the emphatic endorsement of Mr. Webster's conduct, have exerted an influence in behalf of human bondage and in derogation of Christian obligation far beyond the bounds of Massachusetts. The moral bulwark raised at the North against slavery in times past by the religious sentiment and the respect for the rights of man is nearly demolished. "The Slave Power, taking advantage of the present paralysis of the Northern conscience and the frantic cupidity of our demagogues and merchants for Southern votes and Southern trade, is about placing its yoke on willing and bending necks.