isting supports of Freedom; it is to prevent the violation of free institutions in their vital principles. Such a movement should unite in its support all but those few in whose distorted or unnatural vision slavery seems to be a great good. Most clearly should it unite the freemen of the North, by all the considerations of self-interest, and by those higher considerations founded on the rights of man. I cannot dwell now upon the controlling political influence in the councils of the country which the annexation of Texas will secure to slaveholders. This topic is of importance; but it yields to the supreme requirements of religion, morals, and humanity. I cannot banish from my view the great shame and wrong of slavery. Judges of our courts have declared it contrary to the Law of Nature, finding its support only in positive enactments of men. Its horrors who can tell? Language utterly fails to depict them. By the proposed measure, we not only become parties to the acquisition of a large population of slaves, with all the crime of slavery, but we open a new market for the slaves of Virginia and the Carolinas, and legalize a new slave-trade. A new slave-trade! Consider this well. You cannot forget the horrors of that too famous "middle passage," where crowds of human beings, stolen, and borne by sea far from their warm African homes, are pressed on shipboard into spaces of smaller dimensions for each than a coffin. And yet the deadly consequences of this middle passage are believed to fall short of those sometimes undergone by the wretched coffles driven from the exhausted lands of the Northern Slave States to the sugar plantations nearer the sun of the South. One quarter part are said often to perish in these removals. I see them, in imagination, on their fatal journey, chained in bands, and driven like cattle, leaving behind what has become to them a home and a country, (alas! what a home, and what a country!)- husband torn from wife, and parent from child, to be sold anew into more direful captivity. Can this take place with our consent, nay, without our most determined opposition? If the slave-trade is to receive new adoption from our country, let us have no part or lot in it. Let us wash our hands of this great guilt. As we read its horrors, may each of us be able to exclaim, with conscience void of offence, “Thou canst not say I did it." God forbid that the votes and voices of Northern freemen should help to bind anew the fetters of the slave! God forbid that the lash of the slave-dealer should descend by any sanction from New England! God forbid that the blood which spurts from the lacerated, quivering flesh of the slave should soil the hem of the white garments of Massachusetts ! Voices of discouragement reach us from other parts of the country, and even from our own friends in this bracing air. We are told that all exertion will be vain, and that the admission of a new Slave State is "a foregone conclusion." But this is no reason why we should shrink from duty. "I will try," was the response of an American officer on the field of battle. "England expects every man to do his duty," was the signal of the British admiral. Ours is a contest holier than those which aroused these stirring words. Let us try. Let every man among us do his duty. And suppose New England stands alone in these efforts; suppose Massachusetts stands alone is it not a noble isolation? Is it not the post of honor? Is it not the position where she will find companionship with all that is great and generous in the past, with all the disciples of truth, of right, of liberty? It has not been her wont on former occasions to inquire whether she should stand alone. Your honored ancestor, Mr. Chairman, who from these walls regards our proceedings tonight, did not ask whether Massachusetts would be alone, when she commenced that opposition which ended in the independence of the Thirteen Colonies. But we cannot fail to accomplish great good. It is in obedience to a prevailing law of Providence, that no act of self-sacrifice, of devotion to duty, of humanity can fail. It stands forever as a landmark, from which at least to make a new effort. Future champions of equal rights and human brotherhood will derive new strength from these exertions. Let Massachusetts, then, be aroused. Let all her children be summoned to this holy cause. There are questions of ordinary politics in which men may remain neutral; but neutrality now is treason to liberty, to humanity, and to the fundamental principles of free institutions. Let her united voice, with the accumulated echoes of freedom that fill this ancient hall, go forth with comfort and cheer to all who labor in the same cause everywhere throughout the land. Let it help to confirm the wavering, and to reclaim those who have erred from the right path. Especially may it exert a proper influence in Congress upon the representatives of the Free States. May it serve to make them as firm in the defence of Freedom as their opponents are pertinacious in the cause of Slavery. Massachusetts must continue foremost in the cause of Freedom; nor can her children yield to deadly dalliance with Slavery. They must resist at all times, and be forearmed against the fatal influence. There is a story of the magnetic mountain which drew out the iron bolts of a ship, though at a great distance. Slavery is such a mountain, and too often draws out the iron bolts of representatives. There is another story of the Norwegian maelström, which, after sucking a ship into its vortex, whirls the victim round and round until it is dashed in pieces. Slavery is such a maelström. Representatives must continue safe and firm, notwithstanding magnetic mountain or maelström. But this can be only by following those principles for which Massachusetts is renowned. A precious incident in the life of one whom our country has delighted to honor furnishes an example for imitation. When Napoleon, already at the pinnacle of military honor, but lusting for perpetuity of power, caused a vote to be taken on the question, whether he should be First Consul for life, Lafayette, at that time in retirement, and only recently, by his intervention, liberated from the dungeons of Olmütz, deliberately registered his No. Afterwards revisiting our shores, the scene of his youthful devotion to freedom, and receiving on all sides that beautiful homage of thanksgiving which is of itself an all-sufficient answer to the sarcasm that republics are ungrateful, here in Boston, this illustrious Frenchman listened with especial pride to the felicitation addressed to him as "the man who knew so well how to say No." Be this the example for Massachusetts; and may it be among her praises hereafter, that on this occasion she knew so well how to say NO! EQUAL RIGHTS IN THE LECTURE-ROOM. LETTER TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE NEW BEDFORD LYCEUM, After accepting an invitation to lecture before the Lyceum at New Bedford, Mr. Sumner, learning that colored persons were denied membership and equal opportunities with white persons, refused to lecture, as appears in the following Letter, which was published in the papers of the time. Shortly afterwards the obnoxious rule was rescinded, and Mr. Sumner lectured. M BOSTON, November 29, 1845. Y DEAR SIR,I have received your favor of November 24, asking me to appoint an evening in February or March to lecture before the New Bedford Lyceum, in pursuance of my promise. On receiving the invitation of your Lyceum, I felt flattered, and, in undertaking to deliver a lecture at some time, to be appointed afterwards, I promised myself peculiar pleasure in an occasion of visiting a town which I had never seen, but whose refined hospitality and liberal spirit, as described to me, awakened my warmest interest. Since then I have read in the public prints a protest, purporting to be by gentlemen well known to me by reputation, who are members of the Lyceum, and some of them part of its government, from which it appears that in former years tickets of admission were freely sold to colored persons, as to white persons, and that no |