The Slave Power is the Imprisoned Giant of our Constitution.

I insist that this day shall be kept sacred to human rights,--not be given up to their overthrow.

Out of those ninety, more than seventy-five have borne arms for you in the late war; and yet these people are now positively disfranchised in the constitution it is proposed to recognize.

The constitution, when formed, shall be republican, and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Now, Sir, I insist that the constitution presented to us is not republican; and I further insist that it is inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence.

The face of Nature may be blasted, the land may be struck with sterility, villages may be swept by floods of flame, and whole families entombed alive in its burning sepulchre; but all these evils are small, compared with the deep, abiding…

Let us, then, pledge ourselves, in solemn form, by united exertion, to restrain this destructive influence, at least within its original constitutional bounds.

Let us struggle for Freedom as they struggle for Slavery.

Let us rally under our white pavilion, with its trophies of Justice, Freedom, and Humanity, as enthusiastically as they troop together beneath their black flag pictured over with whips, chains, and manacles.

It will not be enough merely to put forth opinions in well-couched phrase, and add yet other resolutions to the hollow words which have passed into the limbo of things lost on earth.

We must give to our opinions that edge and force which they can have only from the declared determination to abide by them at all times.

The Whigs of Massachusetts, so far as in them lies, must pronounce a similar sentence of disqualification upon all not known to be against the extension of Slavery.

It is distinctly proclaimed by the Slave Power, that no person can receive its support who is known to be against the extension of Slavery.

It will show that we are in earnest, and, so doing, we help to check that tyrannical spirit which has thus far intimidated the politicians--I will not say the people--of the Free States.

To those now too ready for the part of Grand Compromiser, on a question which admits of no compromise, it will be a warning that they can expect no support for high office from us.

Our motto must be, "Principles, and those only who will maintain them.

Loyalty to principle is higher than loyalty to party.

All who have read his paper on this occasion will attest the force and sharpness of his unanswered argument.

Justly eminent as a practical diplomatist, his works derived new value from the position of their author, while even his official rank was aided by his works.

His was a solitary example in our age, perhaps the only instance since Grotius, of an eminent minister who was also an expounder of the Law of Nations.

His Elements afford the best view yet presented of the Law of Nations, as practically illustrated in the adjudged cases of England and the United States, and in recent diplomacy.

This work supplies a place never before filled in the literature of the English language, if in that of any language.

To all students of jurisprudence, nay, more, to all students of history, who ascend above wars and battles to the principles which are at once parent and offspring of events, this account of the Progress of the Law of Nations is an…

In those two great departments of labor, History and the Law of Nations, he is among our American pioneers.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.