| 422 if it is a fact, that American citizens, after having purchased lands from the government, and received the government guarantee to be protected in the enjoyment of them, they can be lawlessly and causelessly driven off by violence and cruelty, and yet the government have no power to protect them, or redress their wrongs. Tell not this in Pennsylvania, publish it not in the streets of Harrisburg, for surely, the sons of the 'Key Stone State' will feel themselves insulted.
Well may the nations of the old world ridicule the weakness, and impotency of our free institutions, a government not able to protect its own citizens! A government, it must be famous indeed in the annals of history, and a pattern to the world, which is so governed as to admit the most flagrant abuses known to the civilized world, and acknowledged by all to be such; and yet no power to redress them. Hear it O ye barbarians! Listen to it O ye savages!! and hasten, yea hasten all of you to America; there you can glut your avarice by plunder, and riot in the blood of innocence, till you are satisfied, and the government has no power to restrain, nor strength to punish, nor yet ability to redress the sufferers at your hands.
From the acquaintance which your memorialist has with the history of his native state, he has been induced to make his appeal to your honored body-a state whose people are noted for their civic virtues and zealous attachment to the principles of civil and religious liberty; a people venerable from the beginning of our national existence; whose virtuous efforts to the sacred principles of freedom, religious, civil, and political, have obtained for themselves imperishable laurels in the history of our country's glory; a people whose colonial organization was based upon the holy principles of equal rights and equal privileges; a people whose national escutcheon has never been stained with the martyrs blood; a state whose statesmen, divines and heroes, labored in the cabinet, the desk and the field, to secure, and hand down to their posterity, in all succeeding ages, the boon of heaven, the sacred rights of freemen.
It was in the honored metropolis of Pennsylvania, the seat of the first colonial congress, when the principles of liberty were matured, from whence emanated the voice of independence, whose echoes rolled and reverberated, till it reached the circumference of the colonial settlements, and inspired the sons of freedom, until there was but one voice heard: "Freedom or death." It was there when the leaders and heroes of the revolution, pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors, to each other, to be scourged by a tyrant's scepter no longer, until all they had, and all they were, were offered on the altar of freedom.
Not only were the principles of equal rights inscribed in legible characters on the flags which floated on her towers, in the incipient stages of our national existence, but they were engraven on the hearts of the people, with an impression which could not be obliterated. All who collected in her towers, or fought under her banners, could contend and fight for freedom only. Her teachers of religion, whose influence in the pulpit, and eloquence in public assemblies, wielded an overwhelming influence in the pulpit, and eloquence in public assemblies, wielded an overwhelming influence in forwarding the cause of liberty; did they use this influence in securing to themselves governmental patronage, or religious preferences? All acquainted with the history of the times answer no. They were citizens of Pennsylvania, and the immortal Penn had inscribed on every pot and bell in the colony, 'Civil and Religious liberty.' The patriotism of Pennsylvania's religious teachers was pure. They threw in their whole weight of character and influence to promote a cause which made others equal with themselves; for the glorious privilege of seeing a people free. Her heroes bore the horrors of war, not to sway the tyrant's scepter, or enjoy a lordling's wealth, but to found an assylum [asylum] for the oppressed, and prepare a land of freedom for the tyrant's slave.-Her statesmen, while in the councils of the nation, devoted all their wisdom and talents to establish a government where every man should be free; the slave liberated from bondage, and the colored African enjoy the rights of citizenship; all enjoying equal rights to speak, to act, to worship, peculiar privileges to none. Such were Pennsylvania's sons at the beginning; and surely their sons and successors must have degenerated, lamentably degenerated, from the purity and patriotism of their fathers and predecessors, if crimes and cruelties, such as your memorialist complains of, go unheeded and unregarded. Honorable regard for the people of my native state forbids the thought.
In confidence of the purity and patriotism of the representatives of the people of his native state, your memorialist comes to your honorable body, through this his winged messenger, to tell you that the altar which was erected by the blood of your ancestors, to civil and religious liberty, from whence ascended up the holy incense of pure patriotism and universal good will to man, into the presence of Jehovah, a savior of life, is thrown down and the worshipers thereat, have been driven away, or else they are laying slain at the place of the altar.-
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