JAN. 31, 1835.]

ERENCH RELATIONS.

Mr. J. Q. ADAMS reminded the House that a few days ago he obtained permission to offer a resolution, calling on the President for any further information he might have touching the state of the negotiation with France on the subject of the treaty of 1831. The subject was very important, and it was one on which the House would soon be called to act in one way or another, and he therefore asked the House to take up and consider the resolution.

No objection being made, the resolution, which is as follows, was taken up and agreed to:

Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to communicate to this House, if not incompatible with the public interest, any correspondence with the Government of France, and any despatches received from the minister of the United States at Paris, not hitherto communicated to the House, in relation to the failure of the French Government to carry into effect any stipulation of the treaty of the 4th of July, 1831.

J. N. REYNOLDS'S REPORT.

On motion of Mr. PEARCE, of Rhode Island, the House took up for consideration the resolution which he offered a few days ago, for printing 1,000 extra copies of the report of J. N. Reynolds to the Secretary of the Treasury, concerning the shoals, reefs, &c., of the South

sea islands.

Mr. PEARCE modified the resolution so as to fix the number of copies at 2,000.

Mr. JARVIS opposed the resolution. It appeared to him, he said, that it was time to check this extravagance. We ought not to suffer people to throw upon Congress their worthless books, which could find their way to the press in no other manner.

[H. OF R.

were not acquainted with the subject. The amount of American tonnage employed there exceeded the aggregate amount of the tonnage of all other nations in the same employment. This navigation of the South seas was very little known, and little aided by maps or charts. All the nautical information by which it was assisted was derived from surveys ordered by other Governments, which were less interested in it than we were, or from charts prepared by individual navigators of our own country.

The subject was highly interesting to our commerce and navigation, and was entitled to the early attention of the Government. The publication of Mr. Reynolds's report would be one step towards making this important navigation known. The resolution was then adopted.

PRE-EMPTION RIGHTS.

Mr. PLUMMER, by consent, offered the following resolution:

Resolved, That the Committee on Public Lands be instructed to inquire into the expediency of granting to the settlers on the public lands within that district of country ceded to the United States by the treaty of Dancing Rabbit creek, in the State of Mississippi, where improvements have been covered by Indian and Jefferson college claims, and thereby deprived of the benefits of the pre-emption laws, a pre-emption right and other lands, in lieu thereof, and of granting unto them such other relief as they may deem equitable and just.

him that when that bill came up for consideration an amendment would be proposed thereto, to include the State of Mississippi, the session being so far advanced that a separate bill could not be passed.

Mr. CLAY said he did inform the gentleman that he would move an amendment embracing the State of Mis

Mr. BURGES would not, he said, have uttered a word on this question but for the extraordinary character of the opposition made to the proposition of his colleague. While adorning this Capitol with marble statuary, at the expense of twenty or thirty thousand dollars, are we to be told that it is extravagance to spend a few hundred dollars in printing a book to warn the mariner of dangerous shoals? Should we do nothing for that toilsome industry which was the great support of all our national interests? The objection, he thought, ill became the quarter from which it proceeded. Was the great interest from which we derived our daily support to be utterly neglected? For commerce, from which we derived nearly the whole of our revenue, we had done less than for any other interest. The mariner, the navigator, and the merchant, were deeply interested in the publication of this document, and he would be willing to augment the proposed number twenty times, so as to place a copy in the hands of every man who is interested in the subject.

Mr. PHILLIPS was, he said, deeply convinced of the necessity of diffusing this valuable document among those who were concerned in the navigation of the South seas. Our navigation, in that quarter, had increased to an extent which would surprise those who

House were disposed to pass the bill relating to Alabama and Illinois, they would not object to the proposition for Mississippi. He had, however, no objection to the resolution being agreed to and referred to the Committee on Public Lands.

Mr. PLUMMER explained that the resolution embraced other objects, relative to settlement rights, than those referred to by his honorable colleague.

Mr. CLAY was not at first aware of that, and therefore he trusted the resolution would be adopted. The resolution was then agreed to.

CLAIM OF THE HEIRS OF ROCHAMBEAU. A message in writing was received from the President of the United States, by Mr. Donelson, his private secretary, which was read, and is as follows:

To the House of Representatives of the United States:

With reference to the claim of the granddaughters of the Marshal de Rochambeau, and in addition to the papers formerly communicated, relating to the same subject, I now transmit to the House of Representatives, for their consideration, a memorial to the Congress of the United States, from the Countess d'Ambrugeac and the Marquis de la Goree, together with the letters which accompanied it. Translations of these documents are also sent.

ANDREW JACKSON.

H. of R.]

The message was ordered to be printed and lie on the table.

GENERAL APPROPRIATION BILL.

The bill making appropriations for the civil and diplomatic expenses of the Government for the year 1835 was then taken up, read a third time, and passed.

The House then proceeded to the orders of the day, being private bills.

The question pending being the further consideration, in Committee of the Whole, of the bill for the relief of the legal representatives of

RICHARD W. MEADE.

Mr. WHITTLESEY, of Ohio, said he hoped the friends of that bill would consent to its temporary postponement; for he feared, if it was taken up, no other business would be acted on that day.

After some conversation between the CHAIR, Messrs. WHITTLESEY, POLK, ARCHER, HUB. BARD, MANN of New York, and VINTON,

This bill, with several others, was laid aside; and the House, on motion of Mr. WHITTLESEY, of Ohio, resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole, (Mr. WARD in the chair,) and proceeded to take up and consider a large number of private bills, many of which were ordered to a third reading; when the House again went into Committee of the Whole, and spent the remainder of the day in the consideration of private bills, many of which were reported to the House; when, The House adjourned.

Mr. Speaker: On the presentation of these petitions, and asking for them a different reference from that usually given to such petitions, I propose to offer a few remarks. They shall be presented in that blended spirit of freedom and candor, truth and justice, that becomes a member of this House. I will not conceal my own feelings, and I shall studiously avoid intentionally injuring those of others. And whilst I am opposed to and deeply deplore the existence of slavery in every form, and in every land, I, in common with the petitioners, disclaim all power in the national Government to control or abridge its duration in the several States of this Union. And throughout these remarks, in speaking of slavery in this country, I wish to be understood as confining my remarks to that portion of the country over which the national Government has ample and complete jurisdiction, and the sole power of legislation, and that is the District of Columbia. One of the petitions is signed by more than eight hundred ladies of the city of New York. In the Jewish, Greek, and Roman histories, we learn that

female remonstrance and entreaties were often heard in the public councils, and, in one instance, were the cause

of ، enlargement and deliverance,” of ، light, and gladness, and joy, and honor," to a despised and an oppressed people; and in all instances roused the patriot, the statesman, and the hero, to deeds of usefulness and glory, and were all-powerful in expanding and extending the principles of charity, humanity, and benevolence,

[FEB. 2, 1835.

and in breaking the chains of oppression. In the chivalrous ages of modern Europe, and since, and in the war of our independence, the influence of woman was talismanic over the heart of man, and roused to action all his noblest energies. And to her honor, all her remonstrances, petitions, and entreaties, and all her influence, have ever been exerted in favor of humanity, benevo lence, and liberty. And, surely, the chivalry of this House will never permit it to turn a deaf ear to the remonstrance of ladies, pleading, as they believe, for the wronged and the oppressed.

The petitioners complain that a portion of the people of the District of Columbia are, without crime, disquali fied as witnesses. A freeman may commit any crime, even murder itself, in the presence of slaves only, and escape conviction and punishment. They complain that, by the laws of the District, which are the laws of Congress enacted to govern the same, every black man, and every mulatto of every shade and complexion, though born and nurtured in freedom all his days, the moment he touches the soil of the District, is presumed a slave; and, by an ordinance of the city of Washington, he is treated as a disorderly person, and required to exhibit to the mayor, within thirty days, evidence of his freedom, and enter into a bond, with two freehold sureties, in the penalty of five hundred dollars, conditioned for his peaceable, orderly, and good conduct, and not to become chargeable to the corporation for twelve months, to be renewed at the commencement of each year for two successive years, or forthwith depart from the city, or be committed to the work-house until he complies with such requisitions; such imprisonment not to exceed twelve months for each neglect; so that the poor black or mulatto may be imprisoned at hard labor in the workhouse, for the term of three years, although innocent, and without crime.

He may have been well educated, moral, and indus trious; have exercised the elective franchise, and voted for the highest officers of the national and State Govern ments, entitled to all the rights and privileges of the white man, and of an American citizen; yet, in this Dise trict, he shall be presumed a slave, and in the city of Washington a disorderly person, and compelled to give security for his good behaviour for three years. No such presumption of crime is known to the laws of England, to the civil law, nor to the municipal code of the most despotic country in Europe. It has no foundation in the law of nature, the common law, nor in common justice, and is contrary to the genius and spirit of all wise and free Governments. It is a maxim, that every man is to be presumed free and innocent, founded on the immu table principles of eternal justice, acknowledged by all, and which can never be changed but by that arbitrary tyranny which feels power, forgets right, and knows neither mercy nor justice.

The petitioners complain that, by the laws of the District, every such free black man or mulatto, going at large without the evidence of his freedom, is liable to be taken up as a runaway slave, and thrown into prison, and sold for prison fees, as a slave for life, unless he proves his freedom. Unless he proves his freedom!-a freedom given him by a power older than the laws which incarcerate him-older than the country which and which shall endure when this world is on fire, and gave him birth-older than the primeval days of time, time shall be no more, by God himself. They complain that, by the laws of that part of the District formerly Maryland, though such person bea freeman, and prove his freedom, and shall then refuse to pay the fees and rewards for apprehending fugitive slaves, he may be committed to prison, and sold as a slave for life; so that a freeman, although he does away the before-mentioned odious presumptions of law by

clear proof, must still pay for his own illegal arrest and false imprisonment, for being thrown into the damps of a dungeon, and shut out from the light of day, for all the injuries, indignities, and wrongs, that could be heaped upon him, or be sold as a slave, and never more to breathe the air of freedom, Terrible alternative! more afflictive to a human being, having the feelings of a man, of a freeman, than death itself. Such laws are meshes to entrap the unwary, and to consign a freeman to servitude for life. They are man-traps set at the seat of Government of this Republic to seize and drag into perpetual bondage a freeman, entitled to all the rights and privileges of an American citizen. Does such a statute blot the page or tarnish the annals of any other Republic on earth? Does it dishonor the pages of any monarchy or despotism now in the world? The tyranny of Caius Verres, in a province of the Roman empire, was mercy when compared with such a law. Many, very many freemen, have fallen victims to this merciless law, and lost all dear to them on this side of the grave.

The petitioners complain of the severity of the punishments that may, by the laws of the District, or of that part of it which was formerly Maryland, be inflicted on slaves; that any negroes, or other slaves, for rambling by night, or the riding of horses by day, without leave, may be punished by whipping, cropping, branding, or otherwise, not extending to life, or rendering them unfit for labor; and for murder, arson, and petit treason, to have the right hand cut off, to be hanged, to have the head severed from the body, the body divided into four quarters, and the head and quarters to be set up in the most public places of the county where the crime was committed. Such criminal laws, if not executed, and it is not pretended they are, to their full extent, appear like the relic of an extreme barbarous age, and, in this enlightened and humane age of the world, are a foul Elot on our statute book, and ought to be modified or repealed.

The petitioners complain that, by the laws of the United States, the slave trade, in and through the District of Columbia, is permitted to be carried on with distant States, and that this District is the principal mart of the slave trade of the Union.

[H. OF R.

sold to the slave traders, transported to a distant land, beyond the hope or possibility of relief; sold as slaves for life, and their temporary had been changed into a perpetual bondage. It has been said by a committee of this House, that the last-mentioned class may apply to the courts; that the courts are open to them in the District.

To talk to men degraded to the condition of cattle, (their masters their enemies, conspiring with the purchaser to deprive them of liberty for life, and no freeman their friend,) of courts of justice, is adding insult and scorn to injustice, and aggravating their doom by a mockery of all the forms and all the tribunals of justice. Private cells and prisons have been erected by the slave traders in the District, in which the negro is incarcerated until a cargo of slaves, of "human chattels," can be completed. The public prisons of the District, built with the money of the whole people of the United States, have been used for the benefit of the slave traders, and the victims of this odious traffic have been confined within their walls. The keepers of those prisons, paid out of the moneys of the whole people, have been the jailers of the slave traders, until their drove, their cargo of human beings, could be completed.

The petitioners complain that a traffic so abhorrent to the feelings of the philanthropist, so replete with suffering and wo, is approved and licensed by the corporation of the city of Washington, which receives four hundred dollars a year for each license, thus increasing her treasures by the express sanction of so odious a trade. Finally, the petitioners complain of the exist tence of slavery in the District of Columbia, as the source of all the before-mentioned evils, and others too numerous now to detail. They consider it as unchristian, unholy, and unjust, not warranted by the laws of God, and contrary to the assertion in our Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal."

In the last debate, and in the last speech made on this floor on this subject, it was denied that these words meant, or had any allusion to slaves, and was asserted that many of the signers of the declaration were masters of thousands: " and had they an eye at all to slaves when they signed it, they would have been hypocrites, unworthy of being commemorated by patriots, or honest men." Then slaves are not men, for the terms used were the broadest that could be used, and embraced the whole species. Let us consider for one moment whether the blacks and the mulattoes of this country are men

sions and the abodes of the Eternal.*

Since that time the slave trade in the District has increased in extent, and in its enormities. Free blacks have been kidnapped, hurried out of the District, and sold for slaves. Slaves for a term of years have been

The heathen philosophers teach us that man was created in the likeness of the Almighty, of God; and neither heathen poetry nor heathen philosophers ever informed us of the creation of more than one species of man. By their doctrines, man was created the brother of his fellow-man, and his equal. The Old Testament informs us that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him," and gave him dominion

*Finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta Deorum
Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terram;
Os homini sublime dedit; cœlumque tueri
Jussit Erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

[Ovid's Met. B. 1, verse 83, &c.

over all the earth, the fish, the beasts, the fowls of the air, and every creeping thing, but no dominion over and no power to enslave his fellow-man.

And here, again, we learn the creation of but one species of man. Christianity, in all its holy precepts, and the New Testament, instruct us that God hath made of one blood all nations of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth." Revelation, then, yea, God himself, has declared there were and are but one species of man; that all men are descended from one common origin, and were all created equal. The wise framers of the Declaration of Independence, and the founders of this Republic, in accordance with the doctrines of heathen poetry and heathen philosophy, of Christian philosophy, of the Scriptures, and of Revelation itself, in that immortal instrument, the enduring monument of their wisdom, proclaimed to an admiring world, as "self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Did they mean slaves? Can any one doubt that they did? They spoke of man not as black, or white, but as embracing the entire species, all colors and all complexions.

Enlightened citizens of a Christian country, they shall be presumed to have spoken as Christian men: and none but infidels, and those who deny the authenticity of the Scriptures, will pretend that God ever created more than one species, one race of men. They were no hypocrites. They were patriots, nobly struggling for their country's freedom; their hearts were warmed with the fires of liberty; they breathed benevolence and good, will to the human race, and, in deferential homage to the Ancient of Days, proclaimed aloud to the bond and free, the truth, impressed alike on the heart of the lettered and unlettered man by nature and nature's God, that "all men are created equal."

Whence, then, and who made the distinction between the white and the black man? It was not the decision of ancient times. Then the slave was the victim of conquest, and a white man. Nor has the decision of modern times been uniform on thi ssubject. For, as late as the eleventh and the first half of the twelfth century, hundreds and thousands of the youths of both sexes, of beautiful forms, from the peasantry of England, were fastened together with ropes, taken to the city of Bristol, and sold into slavery in Ireland. It was abolished on the conquest of Ireland by Henry II.

The slaveholders in ancient times, and in Ireland, contended with as much zeal for their right to enslave the white man, as any slaveholder in this District for his right to hold in bondage the black man or the mulatto. It has been regretted by a committee of this House, "that persons without the District," as well members of Congress as others, "and having no concern with it," should attempt to procure the abolition of slavery and the slave trade here; and it was, in the year 1829, declared by a member of the House, in debate on this floor, to be meddling with matters truly other men's." Sir, the territory is federal, and is under the care, protection, and government, of the whole people of the United States. Congress is the sole legislative body for the District, to the exclusion of all others, and here possessing undefined, unlimited legislative powers, selected by the people of the whole Union. The whole Union defrays the expenses of the local Legislature and of the entire territorial Government, builds penitentiaries, endows schools and colleges, makes side walks, Macadamized roads, canals, aqueducts, and bridges, pays the interests on loans, and beautifies and adorns the District by its navy yard, its arsenal, its Capitol, and other public buildings and improvements, and enriches it by the

annual expenditure of millions.

[FEB. 2, 1835.

Every member of the House may, with or without petition, originate, bring forward, and propose to Congress any bill for the benefit of, or in any way concerning, his own immediate district, his State, or any State in the Union. His powers for such purpose are, and must be, coextensive with the jurisdiction of Congress. The power is incident to all legislative assemblies, having a general jurisdiction and the power of legislation. It is not only the right, but the duty, of a member, to watch over, and with vigilance to guard, protect, and promote, the interests of all parts of the country. And shall it be said that he has no right and power to propose laws for the District of Columbia, to do away wrongs and oppres sions here, where his powers of legislation are more unlimited than in any other part of the Union? The idea that he cannot, seems to me preposterous. And if a mem ber has such right, surely his mind may be enlightened, his attention awakened to corruption, crimes, or oppres sions here, and his patriotism roused to action, by the petitions of his constituents, or of the people of any other portion of his country. In this District every member of Congress, and every citizen of the Republic, should feel a deep and lively interest. They all have a voice in selecting its rulers, they all contribute to defray its expenses, and they all have a deep concern in its honor and glory, and have a right to be heard in its legislative as sembly, in all matters concerning the appropriation of money here, or the correction of abuses, oppressions, and tyranny. As the seat of their empire, under the superintending power of the general Government, they have a right to require that it shall be governed in accordance with our Declaration of Independence and the principles of free government, and that the despotism of Archangel and of Turkey should not prevail here.

But, sir, if it were necessary that the citizens of this District should petition, many of them have petitioned for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in this District, and this fact may not be known to most of the members of this House. I hold in my hand a petition, taken from the files of this House, presented in the year 1828, signed by the judges of the circuit court of the District of Columbia, and more than 1,000 respectable citizens of the counties of Alexandria and Washington, and then owning a large proportion, and, I am credibly informed, more than a moiety of the property of this District. So that the abolition of slavery here would be in accordance with the feelings and wishes of a large and highly respectable portion of the citizens of the whole District.

Sir, the petitioners ask that slavery and the slave trade in and through the District of Columbia may be abolished, with their appalling train of evils. They enter into no details, and they prescribe no terms, no conditions. Those they very properly submit to the discretion and the wisdom of Congress. They ask that these petitions may be referred to a select committee. This request, I submit, is reasonable, and should be granted. The parliamentary usage of all free deliberative and legislative assemblies requires that the petition should be referred to a committee, a majority of whom should be favorable to the prayer of the petitioners. Similar petitions, for years past, have been referred to the Committee on the District of Columbia, and for the last ten or twelve years, I believe, a majority of the Committee on the District have been from the slave-holding States. I mean no reflection on the Speakers of the House, but mention it as a fact proper to be known by the people. Perhaps, as long as it was a slave-holding territory, it was proper in relation to the general business and interests of the District that a majority of the committee should be from the slave-holding States. But, sir, their early education, associations, habits, and interests, and a knowledge of human nature, must convince us that they could never