The State to which I belong, must "perform a lustration"--must
purge and purify herself from the feculence of civil slavery, and
emulate the States of the North in their zeal for throwing down the
gloomy idol which we are said to worship, before her senators can have
any title to appear in this high assembly. It will be in vain to urge
that the old United States are exceptions to the rule--or rather (as the
gentlemen express it), that they have no disposition to apply the rule
to them. There can be no exceptions by implication only, to such a
rule; and expressions which justify the exemption of the old States
by inference, will justify the like exemption of Missouri, unless they
point exclusively to them, as I have shown they do not. The guarded
manner, too, in which some of the gentlemen have occasionally expressed
themselves on this subject, is somewhat alarming. They have no
disposition to meddle with slavery in the old United States. Perhaps
not--but who shall answer for their successors? Who shall furnish a
pledge that the principle once ingrafted into the Constitution, will not
grow, and spread, and fructify, and overshadow the whole land? It is the
natural office of such a principle to wrestle with slavery, wheresoever
it finds it.
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