VOLUME 2. The Safeguards of Personal Liberty BY HON. WM. D. KELLE.Y. Ladies AND GKNTLEMKN : The presence of W<ri» an audience ns this in this heated term is unmistakable proof of the interest the people of Phil adelphia take in the subject pioposed to be discussed this eveqiog—"The Safe guards of Personal Liberty." Certainly 110 voice familiar as mine is to tlie people of Philadelphia could, under ordinary cir •cumstances, have attiacted such an audi ence ill such ii season It is well that the jicople are awake to the importance of this subject, for our generation stands con fronting the great problem of the just or-, of Government for a million of ityuarc miles of territory aud lor count less hundreds of millions of happy or miserable people. '1 he Emperor of the French opens his biography of Caesar with t+tut brief sen touce from Montesquieu, which every American should read and ponder, atid accept as a governing maxim iu tlicse times :- U lu the bivth of societies it is the chiefs of thu republio# who form the institution, and iu the sequel it is the iu, , stitution which forms the chiefs ot the republic." It is for us, the existing gen eration; it is for us, perhaps, before the next bills ol mortality shall be footed up, lo determine what shall be the character ,of tho political institutions of the broad territory I have indicated. We arc to .determine whether they shall be malevo lent or beueficcnt, —we, the people ot the rotates of the Union, whose Governments have not been disorganized or overthrown, and whose presence has ever been to It 'in <thc councils of tho nation. Ours is a Government of co-ordinate departments, and the people are the direct source of the legislative department. JVe have just closed a great war, —a war, the magnitude of which has chang ed the phraseology of history. When, aa Americans, you read the phrase "'flic Revolutionary War," you at onee recur to the war of 177<». When, previously to the recent fearful contest, you read tho phrase "The Great Rebellion," you tho't of the English Rebellion, and Clarondon ,and his chronicles; but when men shall hereafter read of tho Great Rebellion, tliey will forget that there was such an -rtdaud us England, and think only of-that .Rebellion which opened graves to nearly a million of American soldiers, and which, .cemented by the blood of the slain the grandest fabric of Government ever giv to man. lApphluso.) , Wo have closed this war gloriously.— The graves of nearly half a million of o*r brave soldiers attest the valor, patri otism and endurance of tho unassuming people {of tho North. The graves of nearly as many Rebels certify in tisgrec to the valor of the American peo ple. Our position as a military power is established. Throw together a statement of the resources exhibited by tho North and South, and lay it upon the table of a .council of kings and emperors, and ask them wliether with all tho power ai-d wealth of Europe they can propose to put upon the shores of America like results, Mitul they will answer "No." have demonstrate 1 to tho nations that the world combined against us may not, by war, dis turb essentially the currents of our life (Applause.) Henceforth internal discord is the sole cause of dread to tho Ameri can statesman and people ; and we may goon through centuries realizing tho Uto pian drpams of More, if we will but be true to the great principles that underlie ,our institutions and should regulate the administration of opr Government. liaving closed thin war thus satisfacto rily, we are entering upon the threshold of another —a war of ideas—which in .volves all the consequences for which so muchjblood and treasure beeu ex pended. It is for us Jto say, peacefully, •quietly, iu the balls of legislation, iuthc Executive Chamber, from the bench, and when tho people assemble in' their majesty, to express fcy fho silent bal ilot their opinions, whether we shall have .tho full results of our sacrifices and achievements; whether we, in our own proper persous, shall enjoy them, or whether they shall possibly never.be re alized, or bo attained only by distaat gen erations after long periods of strife and agithtion, and, perhaps, of war. The con- in which we are now engaged is more difficult than that, frojj which we have ( thus come with banners streaming in glo- : ry. Ourenefciy in that contest was knowu; his uniform was of a different color from that worn by. the national soldier; the standard under wliich ho fought did not bear the .Stars and which our lathers knew aud which wecherish.— We «aw that was armed with deadly weapons, aud using -them for our destruc tion. When he stealthily upon our ,£oil, it was to burn our Tillages. Some AMERICAN CITIZEN. doubted, but more believed, that his hand was engaged in endeavors to fire our cit ies, to disseminate pestilential disease, to poison the fountain from which drinking water flowed to the babe, the aged, the sick. We knew that we were grappling with a deadly enemy in strife, and that it was a contest in which ov,e or the other must conquer,—in which we must vindicate our right to live aud gov ern ourselves, or, with tho black rnau, submit to Le governed by au oligarchy that knew no law but his own will and lusts.(Applause.) The e r 'iomy with whom we now contend is more subtle. Ilis purpose and weap ons are concealed ; his strong fortre.-.ies are in our own midst; his weapons are al ready piercing oui hearts, a#d his chains binding our limbs. enowy that we are grappling with is pri'le of rgee, un christian and anti-republican prejudice (Hjaiiist all races of men sate our orn. (Applause.) lie sits enthroned in our Northern hearts. lie controls our action every hour of the day in every street of Philadelphia; and if we cannot couquer him, we cannot maintain our own free doto, or transmit the real safeguards of personal liberty to our immediate poster ity (Appliwse.) Tho struggle will be fearful, if it ba true that ho that ftjileth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city. "But," you ask, "what aro the safe guards of personal liberty ?" Let me tell you first what they are not, and, in doing so, shock your settled convictions. I know what worshipers of the comprom ises of tho Constitution wo hav.c teen.— I know how. in order to save tho Consti tution and the Union, we have gone on from 1820 to 1860, a period of forty years abandoning etery principle we held dear, abandoningour manhood, abandoning the of our owja personal liberty.— I know how cherished tho letter of th'c Constitution is, and I do not mean to dis parage its value as a frame of govern ment when I say, broadly and with em pnthis, that the safeguards of personal liberty aro not found in laws and consti tutions, —are not found ki legislative or constitutional provisions. These in them selves, as safeguards to personal liberty, arc idle as the summer breeze or the fan tasy of the fevered brain. Do you ask me whether I mean to say that statesmen and philosophers have been wrong in claiming that it is important that consti tutions should guarantee liberty, and that laws should be wise, humane and preserv ative of the rights of individuals ? No; I mean to say that those givo expression mcre.ly -to prevailing sentiment; that they are the means by which you may occa sionally enforco an invaded right, but that they do' not guarantee tho .enjoyment of >rights. Let mo, in the most familiar way, illustrate the truth of these propo sitions. In eery State and every county of the United States, there is a law against riot, —a law enforced by peculiar penalties ; for it punishes not only tho convicted ri oter, but ulso the tax-paying people of a city or county iu which a destructive riot is permittee to occur. It not only requires every citizen to abstain from acts of riot, but if they seo a riot threatening, and fail to rally to the assistance of the au thorities, and prevent or suppress it, autl blocks of stores be burned and millions of dollars worth of property destroyed, it taxes each and every one to reimburse the sufferer. One might suppose, therefore, (hat in no community would there be any destruction of property by riot. Hut constitutions are more sacred than laws, and I turn to the Constitution of the ,Unitpd States and those of every State in the Union. willxemcmber that they cherish and gaard as precious abovo all things, savo human life, the fraedom of speech and of the press, and the right of tha people peaceably to as semble, to discuss their grievances and petition for redreas. "JUiis is not peculiar to any State; it stands out prominent, pre-eminent, in the Constitution of every State. Again, wo find that the Constitu tion of the i'nited States provides speci fically that -'the citizens of each State shall be entitled to nil the pryrilcges and immunities of citizens iu the several States." Lot me illustrate the import ance of this proviso, And show how large a personal interest ,every citizen of the country has in the -republican character of each State Government. We are all ucw Pennsyluanians. We may have been born in any other State of the Union 9r in a foreign land; but if, having been bar.n or naturalized in another, we have lived in this State oue year with the intention of making rt our residence, or if, having been born in a foreign land, we have, af ter five gears' residence, been Naturalized here, we are tPennsylvanians. Yet. un der the clause tf the Constitution of the United States referred to, wo be, at '' Let us have Faith that Right makes Might; and in that Faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it"— A - Lincoln BUTLER, BUTLER COUNTY, PA., WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER \ 1865. the end of ono or two yean, as may be provided by tlie Constitutions of the re spective States, each one a citizen of some other State; that is, by virtue of ottr citizenship here we have a right to emi grate to any other ijtate, and, by the lapse of the time (one or two years at most) fixed by the Constitution of that State, will be invested, not by specific act, but by the mere lapse of tiuie, with citizen ship in that State. And in the iuterim we are constitutionally entitled to the ful lost protection of its laws. Now; let mo challenge your memories. I nUaJI not attempt to startle you jrith any new factj. I have not been exploring classic or uociejot history for illustrations of my views. lam going to appeal to the recollections of this generation, and to events that have happened within ge«- eral notoriety and our own observation.— I begin first with the city of Has ton. I was there in that oeriod of transition when passing from youth to mauhood.—- A nativp of Philadelphia, I had gone counter to the general current of Ameri can emigration, and sought employment in New England, instead of upop the broad fields of the West. I remember to have seen, while in that city, a large assemblage of the wealthy, intelligent un<l enterprising business men of Bostqn, 1n front of a small printing of fice. I saw them take down "by violence the sign fron the frout of it, and direct ly afterwards from the office a pale, calm locking man ; and when they were about to perpetrate violence upon him, two rough men, in their shirt sleeves, pressed through the throng of merchants and other well-dressed gentlemen, and carried hiin safely away. To wha; place? To one of the public buildings near by, —the ol ! State House. Some time af terwards I saw a carriage drive up, the police gather arousd, anil Thoodore Lay man, the Mayor of tho city, with his bat on of office, put that pale, thoughtful man, William Lloyd Garrison—f(,ritwa« he— into the carriage; and hurry to Leverett Street jail, that its thick walls and iron bars might protect hint Proiu a riotous mob of intelligent ontcrprisiug, weal thy people of Boston. And what crime did they alleg<J against him ? "Why, this man," said they, "will think, and. still worse, will, in itCcord -tincc with the Constitution of tho State of Massachusetts and that of the United States, say and print what he thinks,— tho vile rascal.;" I witnessed the sight. His only crime was that he stood by the cardinal text and the underlying princi ple uf tho Constitution of Massachusetts and that of tho United States, an<J exer cised a freeman's right to and for thet ho went to prison; while tho flagiant and well-known violaters of the law wont peaceably home to dine. But again. In that yoar, the sover eign State of Georgia, by the deliberate and unanimous action of both branches of its Legislature, passed a bill, which met tho approval ot the Governor of the State; and i« printed in its statutes, offer ing a reward of SSOOO to the man who would bring the body ol that same Wil liam Lloyd Garrison, dead or aliv,c, into the State of Georgia. For what ? Be cause he had ever violated a law of Geor gia ? Not at all. lie had never been there; ho hud .never been south of Balti more. It was because in tho distant— and, aceording to Southern doctrine, sov ereign—State of Massachusetts, ho would stand by the seminal principle of tho Con stitution of tho States of Georgia and Massachusetts apd the United States ol America; in other words, he would viudi cate the right of the citizen to think and speak ireely. and the right of the people to assemble peaceably and petition tor redress of grievance. I dy not think that William Lloyd Garrison,or the rights he vindicated, found adequatesafeguards in legal or constitutional provisions. Let us come now to a period a little later. In 1838, haviug met with an ac cident which disabled me from the pursuit of my business, I returned to Philadel phia, to the land of William Peun, the City of Brotherly Love. Let me remark, my friends, in passing that as Americans owing supreme allegiance to the Consti tution of the United States, our highest pride should be that we are Americans ; but we are for the time being Pennsylva nia's, uud as "one star differcth from another in glory, and a citizen may feel his cheek glow with pride or blanch with shame as he reviews tho history of his native State or that of his adoption. I, as a Peuusylvanian, exult with all the pridp of proudest manhood over some chapters of Pennsylvania's history, while there are others which I would, if it were possible, wash out with tears of blood. I came -back to Pennsylvauia, which was tho first Stft«, kiagdom or empire since time began that voluntarily, with out remuneration and by deliberate legis- lative jot, abolished human slavery,which was then prosperous in its inidst. (Ap plause.) Yes, to dear old Pennsylvania belobgs the glory of having set tho world at large the example of voluntary eman cipation. Our revolutionary ancestors, in 1780, whilo thero were yet, as it proved, threo yearn of war before them, aud whilo, so far as they knew, there might be ten, provided for the abolition of sla]«iy; and it was as President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and on behalf of tho people of our State, that Franklin, iu 1700,-~but a few months beforo his death, —appearod at the bar «jf the first Cong ress and presented a petition which em bodied these earnest wortlo: — "Your memorialists, particularly en gaged iu attending to the distresses aris ing from slavery, believe it to bo their indispensable duty to p.esent this subjeet to your notice. They have observed with real satisfaction that many important and salutary powers are vested in you for pro moting the welfare and securing the bless ings of liberty to the people of the United States; and as they conceive that these blessings ouji,lit rightfully to'fcc adminis tered, without distinction of color, to ull descriptions of people, so they indulge themselves in the pleasing expectation, that nothing which can bo done for the relief of the unhappy objects of their care witl be cither omit.t&J or delayed. From a persuasion thot equul liberty teas oru/i --nally the portion, and is still the birthright of all men. and influenced by the strong ties of humauity and the principles of their institutions, your jnemorialists con- O.ssj'e themselves bound to use all justi fiable endeavors to loosen the bonds of slavery and promote a general enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. Under these impressions, they earnestly entreat your serious attention te the subjectof slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to tnOse unhappy men, who alone, in this land of freedom, are degraded in perpetual bondage, and who, amidst the genoral joy of surround ing freemen, are groaning in sorvile sub jection ; tft at you will promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race, and, that yon will stej) to the verge of the pow er vetted in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the .persons of o;jr fellow men." Ftoni these primitive dates till IS2O, when, over her unanimous vote in both (louses of Congress, the Missouri Com promise waj; adopted, Pennsylvania stood the foremost, or the foremost, States of the country iu defence of all the safeguards of persoual liberty.— Though there be a sad intervening chap ter iu her history, and though Pennsyl vanians will always blush to remember that James Buchanan was bom on the soil of our State, she has not failed at intervals since 1820 to assert, from time to time, her right to her leading position. It was David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, who, : n 1840, by reviving the Jefferson proviso, reasserted her light; and I may be permitted to say that it was an hum ble sou of Pennsylvania who, in the last Congress, claimed for her her just preco deuce in recognizing the oquality of all men before the law. Rut to return from this digression In 1838, reuicmbaring the early and proud rocord of Pennsylvania, I said, as I left my friends in Boston, "I am going to a State where constitutions are regarded and laws obeyed, and where the people may freely think aud speak. lam going to my native city, where the people have erected, aud are about to dedicate,to free dom a glorious temple, in which the bold est thiukers of tho laud may meet, and in which the humblest people will be instructed." I arrived duriug the week iu whjch I'euu.sylvauia Hall was dedica ted. I visited it. Anxious, perhaps, to boast, vhen I went back, that I bad spo kenjn such a hall, I raised my young voice in what was doubtless a very feeble attempt at eloquence. I also visited, iu the building next to that hall, an humble" looking building in the shadow of its high walls, one whom I had loved from my infancy, oue whom I had never known to be in physical health, but wJbo had lain for years a sainted woman, passing slowly away, and showing how lovely age could be as it glided calmly towards the grave, —the solo surviving sister of my mother. But one evening Rooking in that direction I saw the heavens lurid, and heard, long squares away from tho place, the howling of men. I sought to reach the spot, but iu vain. As I approached it, I thought that the infernal region had yielded its demons to earth, and that they were showing how hideously they could act The blaze sqesaed to reach the very heavens; the stout walls seeotydto totter; and around the raging conflagration the Constitution-loving and law-abiding peo ple of Philadelphia shouted discordant songs of triumph, the key of the hall having been handed over to the Mayor of the pity, that tho act might appear to receive the stamp of municipal authority. How painfully was I thus taught that .Constitutional provisions were not more efficient in Philadelphia than in Boston in guarding the personal rights of the citizen. Put lot us consider the other clause of tho Constitution of the United States re ferral to. A million of square miles of fertile territory seems to mo to be a very* goodly inheritance for a people; and the territory lying south of the Potomac and the Ohio, and west of the Mississippi, claimed by the lata insurrectionary chiefs embraces more t&an a million of square nliles, and is tho most fertile region of our country. The Constitution guarantees, to each and all of you, and tQ all other American men and women, the right to citizenship on every foot of it. It also guarantees iQ a]l the right to communicate freely, by letter or other wise, witi any friend or acquaintance re siding anywhere on that million of square miles of territory. Yet, my friends,have I been able to travel in the Southern Staes lately ? Let me aak you whether the climate of Florida or of Texas or of South Carolina would not liavo been fatally in salubrious to me any day since 1856, had I ventured there. (Laughter.) Now, 1 will not talk about Williajn Lloyd Uar rison, because l#e was a "pestilent fellow;" who was always insisting on Constitution al rights, while I only did it occasionally, wheu an election was coming oJT! (Laugh tor.) Was it not, for years before this Re bellion broke out, dangerous for any Nor thoru man to express, anywhero in the South, the opiniou that it was a Christian duty to do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Did any cler gyman, politician, statesman, or private oitizeu, dare to say .on Southern steam boat, in railroad car, or stage, thot he disapproved of human slavery, because under it you could not do unto others as you would liavo them do unto you?— Would not the political atmosphcro in which he uttered such a sentiment havo beeu dangerous to him ? In other words no one of you coulij safely go ther.o car? rying your mauhood with you. You had toieave that behind whan you travelled South. You might have your trunk and clothing, and your bones, and the coating of flesh that covers them, but you must leave your manhood at home with your wife and children, if you wished to re turn. (Laughter and applause.) You might have a copy of the Constitution of the United States in every pocket of your garments, and hold out that instrument as you safeguard ; but you all know that you wo«4d not have found it a very effi cient protection. Remember how it was in the case of poor I'owers,the Irish-Philadelphia stone mason. Having voted for Buchanan and Florence in the First Congressional District, lie was seeking employment, and was recommended for work on the State House at Columbia, South Caroli na. He jjvent there, and had worked three weeks he happened to drop the remark that '"Slavery cut down the wages of the white man and degraded him, and that the white working man in the South was regarded as little better than a nigger!'' For this offenqo.he was stripped to the belt, as a boxer would say, and tied by the wrists ; a slave was put on each side of him with a cowhide, and he jj'xs flaggelatod till the blood streamed to his slippers. He was then dressed with tar aud sand, and -brought, by slow stages, on an open truck, for nearly a hundred miles, being detained in each town for the gaze o> the multitude as a "Northern Abolitionist." Rarely esca ping with his life, he came back to .Phila delphia. When thus treated, he pleaded in his defenco the Constitution, —at least he told me that he bad done so ; but Jie found it no proteetion. His crime was that he had assorted that a system of un paid labor, applied to foar millions of ,pen, degraded every other laboring man in the section of the country in which it prevailed! You have read of gentle girls decoyed from their New Kngland homes into Southern families to act as teachers, and erf their mails being scru tanized, until finally some injudicious friend sent them a copy of the New York Tribune, or the Independent , with a mon by Beeohcr, or, bolder still, and more indiscreet, the Anti-Slavery Stan dard, or the Liberator; and you havo read how the girl in such a case was turned away without wages and without guidance, but not always without stripes; for in one instance a fair and gentle mai den was treated just as poor Power had been. I have seen a daugucrreotype .of the beautiful face of daughter of old New England. No, fellow citizens; Constitutions and laws are, in themselves, no possible guar antee or safeguard for personal liberty.— Nor are they an efficient restraint on the cupidity or higher impulses of the iudi- vi dual. For instanco, it has been felony in each of the Southern States to tench a colored person to read the Lord's Pray er or the Ten Commandments. Ido not mean to say that the statutes declare it in express language a felony to teach col ored persons to read these particular pas sages ; but tho law did pronouneo it fe'. ony to teach colored persons to read, and this prohibition embraced the Lord's Prayer, tho Ten Commandments, and tho Old and New Testaments. Yet we find among the slaves, anil more largely among the free pooplo of eoW in the South, a very large number who can read and a eoosidornbls number who can write. This circnmstance testifies to different classes of facts. It shows, in the first instance, that there were living under the influence of that infernal system some humano people who occasionally, rogard less of barbarous laws, taught a colored child. Secondly, it shows that these 'tbrutal" colored people, who have "no intellect" "will pot work" and "cannot tako care of themselves," did, in spite of law, and while taking care of their was ters and their lmtsters' families, find time and facilities to learn to read. I>uring my reeout visit to Charleston, I was startled by what sounded like an echo of my own voice, and, turning to the speaker, I found a thick-set black man with hair knotted closo to his head, — "an image of tho Almighty in ebony," if ever one was cut out of that uiiierial. lieforo him, jSamuel Dickerson, stood two little girls in plad silk dresses, with broad rimmed bonnets, and plaid ribbons cor responding with the dresses which they wore. Kach held a boquet, and tho mau a wreath. As I heard his voice, I looked over the whole <place, to myself, and saw by his gestures and moving lips that it was this negro of the purest Af rican blood who was saying to William Lloyd Garrison, who had just ascended the stand beside me, "The emotions with which 1 beheld you, honored sir, are in expressible •" and, having begun thus, he wont on with a speech in flowing senten ces thai .would stamp him as an ooator in any assemblage. In the course of his address, ho said :—For now more than ten years, sir, it has been my privilege, at distant iutervals, to bo encouraged by reaAug your good words in behalf of my oppressed race. To you and the good people of the North, under tho Constitu tion of tho Unite! States, aDd the gui dance of Abraham Lincoln, I owe these dear children. First, the*. mother was taken ; then the elder one w.ir snatched away; and on my knees I pleadod that this little ono might bo left to me as a souvenir of the past. What was the re ply that I received? "Urge mo no far ther, or I will your children to different State?." Somehow that man bad learned 10 read, he had stolen that knowledge ; and among many others I heard the same sto ry. Ono would say. "Why, my young mistress taught me." Another would tell me, "I was on a plantation on Uio island, and master had rnc taught so that I might keep tho lit'lo accounts." Thus here and there, benevolence or selfishness had prompted some of the people of the South to violate tho law which made it felony to teach a nogro "to read. There fore, while I urge that constitutions and laws are not the «ol« safeguards, or, in themselves, safeguards of liberty and rights, I also urge that they cannot be made the means of repressing the geni us, the iutcllect, tho aspirations of a mass ot human beings. (Loud applause.) What, then, my friends, are the safe guards of which I have promised to speak? Arc they possible ? Oh, yep ! they are Uic simplest Afcing in the world. They aVe popular sentiment and daily u*age. Where popular sentiment is right, the laws will be just and equal, and wilj he maintained and enforced ;and where pop ular usages are consistent with humanity and justice, there will be small business for the lawyer, for usage will c,nfo:ec t}y) law. I I hear some one say, ' Oh, you have nigger on the irai.u, and now you are beginning to plead for nigger!" God forbid that I should forget the ejifvtance of nearly five millions of human beings, beings who know every sorrow that I kuop (ind every joy that I may feel, and who look through tbo same narrow way to enduring happiness. Thank God I do not forget their existence, and I do not fail to plead for them. But, my white brethren, allow me to assure you it is you for whop I am pleading now. be cause you are more numerous than they. The people of America number about five milliooa; the white people over twenty-£TC millions; and as five is worth more than one, I plead for the five and embrace the sixth, and plead for him too. It is not the negro alone I have NUMBER 46 "on the brain;" it is him and the white man ; it is mankind, and not any Bingle raco or class of uif-n. (Applanso.) Our fathers, when they gave the world a new political system, disputed ail the old foundations of government, and pro claimed new principles. They declared, first, the equal rights of all men. They said, "We hold these {ruths to bo self evident, —that all men are created equal.'' Did they mean equal in stature, in com pkxion, in intellect, in morals?" I an swer the quej-ion by saying they were not fools, nor wero they blind ; they knew that men differ in all these respects. They were speaking cn political subjocts; they were announcing tho foundation principles of politioal institntions, and they proclaimed that, in respect to right all men are equal, and aro alike entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- II CSS. Again, they denied tho legitimacy of e*Wy Government thea existing o* the face of tho globe, and laid the axe at tho foundation of every throne, by affirming that the object of governments is tho pro tection of humap rights, and that Aey "derived their just powers from the con sent of the governed j" and, further, tha k if any form of government violates the rights of the people, it is not only their right but their duty to reform, Or, if ne cossary, overturn it. Upon these propo sitions they rested not only their defence of tho Revolution they inauguratod, but the theory upon which they deteriyi&ed to establish their Government. Pennsylvania, to bring her Govern ment into harmony with these principles, in March, 1780, less than four years pi ter that Declaration, proclaimed tho emancipation of thy Haves, having pre viously secured by constitutional provis ion tho right of suff/age to eycry free man without regard to color. Ilad all the States of tho Union been organirod on theso principles, thero nev er vvould have been a day when you could not have written a letter announ cing the general doctrines of (ho GospeJ iuto any State without bringing i.u 're cipient into bodily danger, because those doctrines would ha-va prevailed in the South as well as in the North, If tfet equality of man had been rccognixed alt over tho country, thero would have been no war during the last i'oyr years, bocausc no man, not even the pardoned ItebeJ, denios that tho jyar wns made to perpetu ate Slavery and secure tho depredation of tho laboring masses. No man will tell you that our newspa pers wero excluded from Southern mails for any other reason than that it was they would endanger the system of inequality that prevailed and was cherished in South. It was this that made it dangerous for us to travel there; it was that fired Pennsylvania Hall; it was this that mobbed William Lloyd Garrison, and disgraced Huston by diaclo aing tho fact that Leirerett Street jail was the only place in that city stong enough for his protection. It was th-w doctrine of human inequality, this viola tion of the principles that underlio ouf Goveenment, this want of harmony be tween our usage and prejudices on tho one hand, and tho theories which animate our Government, and which we all profess to believe, on tho other, that disgraced teforo the world, and converted what should have been our peaceful life into a restless sea of agitation, in which Con stitutional safeguards were abandoned or disregarded. Let tae show you how thoroughly w?, in Philadelphia, are governed to-day by a concession we made to the South years ago, ID the vain hope of securing peace and prosperity by promoting injustice and inequality; let me show you how com pletely we allow our prejudices, ncpt nat ural, but thus engendered, to override the law of Pennsylvania; how some of us who are in this hall join in dem&nding that the btate shall accept our prejudices aa its supreme Jaw. There is not, within the wide limits of Pennsylvania. a jurist ot standing who will risk his professional character by ( denying that, according to the jaw of Pennsylvania, every man and woman who is well behaved, and can pny the fare, has a right to ride in our street cars. That i# the la.w of tho Common wealth, as expounded by our courts; no professional man of reputation will dis pute it. We are a liberal people; as I have shown, our most cherished traditions in dicate our love of .hurnau freedom and equality. We are a patriotic people; we have sent our sons and brothers, and have gone ourselver, to the wax. We are a benevolent people; we have fed the sol diers of every State as they passed thru' cur city, going to or returning from the field, and our hospitals have been attend ed faithfully by women (God bless thetn!) apd by men, doing ell they could fojr the
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