that only in this way could his section maintain its prestige or even its existence. He failed, as any other man would have done; and But we find him, like Cassandra, a prophet whom we cannot love.

he did prophesy truly as to the fate of the South; and in the course of his strenuous labors to divert the ruin he saw impending, he gave to the world the most masterly analysis of the rights of the minority and of the best methods of securing them that has yet come from the pen of a publicist.

MR.

REMARKS ON THE RIGHT OF PETITION

DELIVERED IN THE SENATE, FEBRUARY 13TH, 1840

R. CALHOUN said he rose to express the pleasure he felt at the evidence which the remarks of the Senator from Kentucky furnished, of the progress of truth on the subject of abolition. He had spoken with strong approbation of the principle laid down in a recent pamphlet, that two races of different character and origin could not coexist in the same country without the subordination of the one to the other. He was gratified to hear the Senator give assent to so important a principle in application to the condition of the South. He had himself, several years since, stated the same in more specific terms: that it was impossible for two races, so dissimilar in every respect as the European and African that inhabit the southern portion of this Union, to exist together in nearly equal numbers in any other relation than that which existed there. He also added that experience had shown that they could so exist in peace and happiness there, certainly to the great benefit of the inferior race; and that to destroy it was to doom the latter to destruction. But he uttered these important truths then in vain, as far as the side to which the Senator belongs is concerned.

He trusted the progress of truth would not, however, stop at the point to which it has arrived with the Senator, and that it will make some progress in regard to what is called the right of petition. Never was a right so much mystified and magnified. To listen to the discussion, here and elsewhere, you would suppose it to be the most essential and important right: so far

from it, he undertook to aver that under our free and popular system it was among the least of all our political rights. It had been superseded in a great degree by the far higher right of general suffrage, and by the practice, now so common, of instruction. There could be no local grievance but what could be reached by these, except it might be the grievance affecting a minority, which could be no more redressed by petition than by them. The truth is, that the right of petition could scarcely be said to be the right of a freeman. It belongs to despotic governments more properly, and might be said to be the last right of slaves. Who ever heard of petition in the free States of antiquity? We had borrowed our notions in regard to it from our British ancestors, with whom it had a value for their imperfect representation far greater than it has with us; and it is owing to that that it has a place at all in our Constitution. The truth is, that the right has been so far superseded in a political point of view, that it has ceased to be what the Constitution contemplated it to be,—a shield to protect against wrongs; and has been perverted into a sword to attack the rights of others— to cause a grievance instead of the means of redressing grievances, as in the case of abolition petitions. The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Tappan] has viewed this subject in its proper light, and has taken a truly patriotic and constitutional stand in refusing to present these firebrands, for which I heartily thank him in the name of my State. Had the Senator from Kentucky followed the example, he would have rendered inestimable service to the country.

It is useless to attempt concealment. The presentation of these incendiary petitions is itself an infraction of the Constitution. All acknowledge-the Senator himself -—that the property which they are presented to destroy is guaranteed by the Constitution. Now I ask: If we have the right under the Constitution to hold the property (which none question), have we not also the right to hold it under the same sacred instrument in peace and quiet? Is it not a direct infraction then of the Constitution, to present petitions here in the common council of the Union, and to us, the agents appointed to carry its provisions into effect and to guard the rights it secures, the professed aim of which is to destroy the property guaranteed by the instrument? There can be but one answer to these questions on the part of those who present such petitions: that the right