To this combined effort I might fitly reply, that, with flagrant
inconsistency, it challenges the very discussion it pretends to forbid.
Their very declaration, on the eve of an election, is, of course,
submitted to the consideration and ratification of the people. Debate,
inquiry, discussion, are the necessary consequence. Silence becomes
impossible. Slavery, which you profess to banish from public attention,
openly by your invitation enters every political meeting and every
political convention. Nay, at this moment it stalks into this Senate,
crying, like the daughters of the horseleech, "Give! give."
But no unanimity of politicians can uphold the baseless assumption, that
a law, or any conglomerate of laws, under the name of compromise, or
howsoever called, is final. Nothing can be plainer than this,--that by
no parliamentary device or knot can any legislature tie the hands of
a succeeding legislature, so as to prevent the full exercise of its
constitutional powers.
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