to take as his guide, and it would lead him at length to the land of British freedom. The poor slave bade adieu to his benefactor, and after skulking in the day and travelling by night, he at length came to an unexpected obstacle. It was a broad river (the Savannah), of whose existence he had not the least knowledge. But as nothing remained but to cross it, he tied his two young children on his back, and between swimming where it was deep, and wading where it was shallow, his two elder sons swimming by his side, he at length made out to reach the opposite bank; then returning, he brought over his wife in the same manner. In this way he passed undiscovered through the States of South and North Carolina and Virginia, crossed Pennsylvania without even knowing that it was the land of Quakers; and finally, after six weeks of toil and hardship, he reached Buffalo. Here he placed his wife and children in the custody of a tribe of Indians in the neighborhood, for the poor man will always be the poor man's friend, and the oppressed will stand by the oppressed. The man proceeded to town, and as he was passing through the streets, he attracted the notice of a colored barber, also a man of great bodily power. The barber stepped up to him, and put his hand on his shoulder and said, “I know you are a runaway slave; but never fear, I am your friend." The man confessed he was from Georgia, when the barber said, "Your master inquired about you to-day, in my shop, but do not fear, I have a friend who keeps a livery stable, and will give us a carriage as soon as night comes, to carry your family beyond the reach of a master."

As the ferry boat does not run across the Niagara in the night, by day-break they were at the ferry house, and rallied the ferryman to carry them to the Canada shore. They hastened to the boat, and just as they were to be let go, the master was seen, on his foaming horse, with pistol in hand, calling out to the ferryman to stop and set those people

ashore, or he would blow his brains out. The stout barber, quick as thought said to the ferryman, "If you don't put off this instant, I'll be the death of you." The ferryman thus threatened on both sides, lifted up his hands and cried, "The Lord have mercy on me! It seems I am to be killed any how; but if I do die, I will die doing right," and CUT THE

ROPE.

The powerful current of the Niagara swept the boat rapidly into deep water, beyond the reach of tyranny. The workmen at work on the steamboat Henry Clay, near by, almost involuntarily gave three cheers for liberty. As the boat darted into the deep and rapid stream, the people on the Canada side, who had seen the occurrence, cheered her course, and in a few moments the broad current was passed, and the man with his wife and children, were all safe on British soil, protected by British laws!!

SPEECH DELIVERED AT PENNSYLVANIA HALL,

PHILADELPHIA, MAY 15th, 1838,

ON A RESOLUTION RELATIVE TO THE RIGHT OF PETITION.

THE House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, a body created by the breath of the nostrils of the freemen of this nation, has, by a palpable violation of the Constitution, denied the right of petition; and if there is merit in having been the first body of men clothed with high legislative power, who in this world have exercised it by refusing to hear the petitions of their constituents, then the House of Representatives stands alone in its glory, preeminent, without rival-treading a path which Egyptian Pharaoh, and Russian Nicholas, and the turbaned Sultan, have never ventured upon. What was the prayer of these denied petitioners? They asked the abolition of slavery— AMERICAN, REPUBLICAN SLAVERY!

"Hear, O Heavens! and be astonished, O Earth!"-the representative of yesterday denies the right of his constituent of to-day, to ask him to give liberty to the bondman; denies the constituent the right of having his petition so much as read in the presence of their high mightinesses! The future historian of this land, when truth shall have triumphed over delusion, when the sober dictates of humanity shall have conquered the dark spirit of slaveholding fanaticism, when quadrennial President-making shall not be a draft on the heart's blood of our expiring liberties-astonishment shall make him drop his pen to weep over the degeneracy of his boasting ancestors, till the love of his country's fame shall make him doubt these dreadful scenes in the narrative of the

20th and 21st of December, 1837. He will visit the city bearing the name honored by the father of his country, and turning over volume after volume of ancient Congressional records, shall sigh in the search of the liberty-murdering Congress of December, 1837; till at last he finds on that illfated 21st of December, 1837, that Mr. Patton of Virginia asked the previous question to be put for the adoption of a resolution, by which “all petitions on the subject of slavery to that House should lie upon its table unread, unprinted, unreferred, undebated, and unconsidered;" and that it passed, one hundred and twenty for, and seventy-four against it. “ Ah !?? says the future Tacitus of this land, as he muses over these dark and man-dishonoring pages-"What is here? The 'previous question'-the tyrant's gag!-the petitions on slavery unread, unprinted, unreferred, undebated and unconsidered. Oh! what a rent hath slavery made in the Constitution's robe!"

DECEMBER 21ST, 1837.

On the shortest day of the year-of least light-of most darkness—the deed has been done by slaveholders and their wretched apologists. Oh, the 21st of December, 1837! why must that day rob my country of its glory, its good name, and steep it in infamy? Let the 21st of December, 1837, perish from my country's calendar. Let that day be darkness forever after. "Let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Let the night be solitary, and no joyful voice come therein. Let them curse it, that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning. Let the stars of the twi

light thereof be dark. Let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day."

BURIED ARCHIVES.

But as he turns with mournful steps from this painful soliloquy, he goes to a room thirty by twenty, and twelve feet high, and beholds the mighty mausoleum of the embalmed remains of the Great Unread, the Great Unprinted, the Great Unreferred, the Great Unconsidered-the dead corpse of a nation's right of petition, laid out in solemn state in the wing of the Capitol! There is a library of two millions of authors on one subject-the unread library of a nation's humanity! Behold the manuscripts, three times the number of the Alexandrian library. There lies the collected majesty of entombed Philanthropy. Yes, to this pile of recorded glory, those who wish, in coming generations, to rank high for the nobility of their descent, will send the faithful examiner to see if their ancestor did not sign these unread petitions to Congress, on their father's or mother's, or grandfather's or grandmother's, or great grandfather's or great grandmother's side. And if they did, the man who searches for ancestral merit by which to raise his own, will believe it a happy day for him, when he shall find the name of the progenitors of his race written on these unread and unprinted petitions to Congress, for the abolition of slavery, in the 34th, 35th, 36th, 37th and 38th years of the nineteenth century.

RIGHT OF PETITION.

The right of petition is as old as human want. It is the language of the child to the parent. His every want, his every necessity, appeals to the parent by way of petition. His every gratified desire is but the fruit of some granted petition. The pupil in the school, the scholar in the university, comes to his superior every day with petitions. The