"On the 4th December, 1833, Messrs. Phelps, Garrison, and May, as members of the Philadelphia Convention, signed the following declaration: 'We fully and unanimously recognize the sovereignty of _each State to legislate exclusively_ on the subject of slavery which is tolerated within its limits. We concede that Congress has no _right to interfere_ with any slave State in relation to the momentous subject.' "Mr. Garrison afterwards, in an editorial article in the _Liberator_, thus expresses himself: 'Abolitionists as clearly understand and as sacredly regard the constitutional powers of Congress as do their traducers, and they know, and have again and again asserted, that Congress has _no more rightful authority to sit in judgment upon Southern slavery than it has to legislate for the abolition of slavery in the French colonies_.' "On the 17th of August, 1835, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, duly held in Boston, an address to the public was adopted, professing to set forth the _true principles and objects_ of the society; and to give this statement a stronger claim to the confidence of the community it was authenticated by the signatures of _thirty-one_ of the principal officers and members of the society, including _your own_ and those of three of the committee who reported the late resolution, viz., Messrs. Garrison, May, and Fairbanks. The opinion of the society at that time on the power of Congress was in that document thus explicitly stated: 'We fully acknowledge that no change in the slave laws of the Southern States can be made unless by the Southern Legislatures. Neither Congress nor the Legislatures of the free States have authority _to change the condition_ of a single slave in the slave States.' Yet the society now stands prepared to encourage the slaves to petition Congress for a redress of their grievances! And now, sir, the object of this letter is to ascertain whether the resolution I have quoted does in truth represent the present opinion held by your society on the power of Congress, or whether the resolution was intended to be confined to slaves in the District of Columbia and the territory of Florida.