‘ [68] your brother will pay cash for them at a good profit, and take it as a great favor.’The Wilmot Proviso next receives the notice of the address. An obscure member of Congress from the State of Pennsylvania, but who became a powerful champion of the new Party, had introduced a resolution prohibiting the extension of slavery over soil then free. This measure was earnestly endorsed, in the following words:To the end that the country and the age may not witness the foul sin of a Republic dedicated to Freedom, pouring into vast unsettled lands, as into the veins of an infant, the festering poison of Slavery, destined as time advances, to show itself only in cancers and leprous disease, we pledge ourselves to unremitting endeavors to procure the passage of the Wilmot Proviso, or some other form of Congressional legislation, prohibiting slavery in the territories, without equivocation or compromise of any kind.But the Worcester men advanced still further, and pressed upon the public the question of moral responsibility in ‘opposition to Slavery wherever we are responsible for it,’ standing upon the ground of principle that Slavery is wrong; that no human legislation can elevate into respectability the blasphemy of tyranny, that man can hold property in his fellow-man:Wherever we are responsible for Slavery, we oppose it. Our opposition is co-extensive with our responsibility. In the States, Slavery is sustained by local laws; and although we may be compelled to share the stigma which its presence inflicts upon the fair fame of the country, yet it receives no direct sanction at our hands. We are not responsible for it there. The Federal Government, in whom we are represented, is not responsible for it there. The evil is not at our own particular doors. But Slavery everywhere under the Constitution of the United States—everywhere under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Government—everywhere under the national flag—is at our own particular
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