time-honored compact. It is now in your power to overturn it; you may remove the sacred landmark; and open the whole vast domain to slavery. To you is committed this high prerogative. Our fathers, on the eve of the Revolution, set forth in burning words among their grievances, that George III., "in order to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, had prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce." Sir, like the English monarch, you may now prostitute your power to this same purpose. But you cannot escape the judgment of the world, nor the doom of history.
It will be in vain, that, while doing this thing, you plead, in apology, the principle of self-government, which you profess to recognize in the Territories. Sir, this very principle, when truly administered, secures equal rights to all, without distinction of color or race, and makes slavery impossible. By no rule of justice, and by no subtlety of political metaphysics, can the right to hold a fellow man in bondage be regarded as essential to self-government. The inconsistency is too flagrant. It is apparent on the bare statement. It is like saying two and two make three. In the name of liberty you open the door to slavery. With professions of Equal Rights on the lips, you trample on the rights of Human Nature. With a kiss upon the brow of that fair Territory you betray it to wretchedness and shame. Well did
