What right had a foreign subject to
petition this House?"
Sir, I have incidentally touched upon the argument of precedents,
and shown how untenable it is; but I care not if there were a
thousand precedents of refusal to receive petitions. Such a fact, if
it existed, would not abate my zeal on this point, or shift, in the
minutest degree, my position. Upon the Constitution, upon the
pre-existing legal rights of the People, as understood in this
country and in England, I have argued that this House is bound to
revive the Petition under debate. It is impossible, in my mind, to
distinguish between the refusal to receive a petition, or its
summary rejection by some general order, and the denial of the right
of petition. I have no such microscopic eye as to enable me to
discern the point of difference between the two things. This
procedure may be keeping the word to the ear, but it is breaking it
to the sense: and I go upon general, abstract, original, fundamental
principle, the great principle of democratic liberty, which is the
foundation stone of this Republic. It is for the sacred and
inalienable rights of the People that I here contend. I should
regard the exclusion of petitions from the consideration of the
House as a highhanded invasion of the imprescriptible rights of the
Constituency of the country, of whom we are the representatives, not
the dictators; and it is for that reason I take my stand against it
on the very threshold.
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