The "unfortunate resolution," he continued, was offered by a "silly officious person" at a moment of much haste and confusion just as the meeting was breaking up, and had been approved without proper consideration by the committee whose duty it was to revise all resolutions. "It seems, however, to have been understood by those who voted for it as applying only to free coloured persons whose rights might be infringed by Southern laws or to slaves in the District of Columbia; and the pledge given to try the question of slavery in the United States Courts seems to have arisen from the notion that the question of the accordance of slavery with the Constitution might be incidentally raised and determined even in a case in which the party whose rights are to be vindicated is free." In conclusion Mr. Loring said that this question would assume an important aspect at the future meetings of the Antislavery Society, and earnestly hoped wise and honest counsel would prevail. He thought it would be sufficient ground for dissolving the Union were the United States Supreme Court to assume power over slavery in the several States. "The honesty and common sense of the nation," he wrote, "would revolt against such a doctrine and against those who should maintain it." In his reply, dated the 29th of March, Judge Jay congratulated Mr. Loring on the service he had rendered the cause of abolition by procuring the passage of the resolutions from the board of managers. "In the fulness of our zeal," he wrote, "we are all liable occasionally to stray beyond the line of propriety, and it evinces more devotion to duty to acknowledge and correct errors than to avoid committing them." At the fifth annual meeting of the American Antislavery Society, held at the Broadway Tabernacle on the 2d of May, 1838, Alvan Stewart of Utica, N. Y., offered a resolution, vigorously supported by himself and others, to the following effect: "That the clause of the second article of the constitution of this society be struck out which admits 'that each State in which slavery exists has, by the Constitution of the United States, the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its abolition in said State.'" This motion was equivalent to a declaration on the part of the society that Congress had the right, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery. Judge Jay had previously declared that Stewart's doctrine was false, untenable, and hurtful to the cause. The arguments by which it was supported he considered absurd. For two days of continued debate he exposed its fallacy and danger and was rewarded by the defeat of the resolution. But such attempts to change the original articles of belief upon which the society was founded gave him great uneasiness for the future. His feelings upon this subject were shown in a letter to the secretary of the Young Men's Antislavery Society who had invited him to preside at its convention: