THE RIGHT OF PETITION. A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 23, 1844. It seems to have been the fortune of this House to be employed, during no inconsiderable part of the time since the present session commenced, in discussing what are called first principles. For eight or ten days, not long since gone by, we were occupied with the consideration of that great writ of personal liberty, the Habeas Corpus. And, in the course of that discussion, doctrines were advanced, in some quarters of the House, to my mind not a little strange and startling, and upon which I desired at the time to have made some comments But, in common with many other gentlemen better entitled to a hearing, I attempted in vain to obtain the floor for that purpose. We have now been engaged, during the morning hour of many days, in a debate on a second great principle of civil liberty, the Right of Petition. And upon this subject opinions have been expressed, and positions maintained, which are even more extraordinary and more startling; and from which I am glad of an opportunity to declare my utter dissent. The idea, that the right of petition does not imply the right of having a petition received! The doctrine, that the right of the people to apply to the government for redress of grievances does not involve any obligation on the part of the government to heed, or even hear, that application! The position which has been seriously maintained here, that all that was ever intended by the right of petition, was the right of individuals or of assemblies to prepare and sign a paper, setting forth the grievances under which they are suffering, and the redress which they seek; and that it was no part of that intention to secure to that paper any consideration or entertainment whatever from those to whom it is addressed! Why, Sir, these doctrines seem to me about as reasonable as it would be to contend, that the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus implies no obligation on the part of the officer to whom it is directed to regard or obey the writ, and no duty on the part of the government to execute or enforce it; but that it is only designed to secure to an imprisoned citizen the satisfaction of having the writ itself, duly signed and attested, to amuse himself with in his solitary confinement, -to meditate upon by day, or to put under his pillow to dream upon by night! They seem to me about as reasonable as it would be to maintain, that the freedom of the press extends only to the freedom of the mechanical enginery of the press; that it was only intended to secure the rights of individual printers to compose, set up, and strike off, such matter as might be agreeable to them; but that it does not reach to the privilege of publishing or circulating that matter after it is struck off! In a word, Mr. Speaker, if the right of petition is really nothing more than it has been represented to be by some of the honorable members who have preceded me in this debate, it is, in my judgment, as poor a pretence, as miserable a mockery, as empty and unmeaning and worthless an abstraction, as was ever dignified by a swelling name or a high-sounding title; and the sooner it is expunged from the roll of civil liberty, the sooner it ceases to hold out to the ear a promise only to be broken to the hope, the sooner will the people understand what rights they really do possess. But, Sir, I desire to proceed with this subject a little more methodically, and to notice with something more of precision and exactness the arguments which have been adduced in favor of these doctrines. The question before the House is, whether the rule, which has obtained a most odious notoriety, in many quarters of the country, under the name of the twenty-first rule, and which has lost nothing of its offensiveness by recently assuming the alias of the twenty-third rule, shall remain as one of the permanent rules and orders of the present Congress. This is the question plainly presented in the instructions which have been moved by the honorable member from Georgia (Mr. Black;) and this is the question no less plainly involved in the simple motion to recommit the report. And what is this rule? It is a rule providing that no petitions, resolutions, memorials, or other papers, on certain enumerated subjects, shall be received by this House, or entertained in any way whatever. Now, Sir, I care not what those enumerated subjects are. I hold it entirely unimportant to this argument to state them. Whatever they may be, the principle of the rule is, in my judgment, the same. If this House may declare to-day that it will receive no petitions on one class of subjects, it may to-morrow declare that it will receive no petitions on another class of subjects; and, on the third day, it may refuse to receive any petitions at all. The real inquiry is, have we a right to prescribe to those who have sent us here on what particular subjects their prayers shall be heard in these halls? Is it within our prerogative to say to the people of the United States" Gentlemen, you may assemble together in what numbers you please, to consult upon what you may choose to consider your grievances; you may sign your petitions individually or collectively; you may adopt resolutions in your primary meetings, or in your legislative assemblies; but if those petitions or resolutions contain any allusion to this, that, or the other topic, we will not receive them, or entertain them in any way whatever?" Sir, I utterly deny the existence of any such right on our part. I hold it to be inconsistent with the relations we sustain to our constituents. I hold it to be unwarranted by any thing either in the reason or the history of parliamentary proceedings. I hold it to be in direct conflict with the spirit and intent of express provisions of the Constitution. And I hold it, also, to be subversive of original, inherent, and inalienable rights of the people. The honorable member from Tennessee, (Mr. A. V. Brown,) in justifying this rule, a few mornings ago, drew an analogy from the relations of parent and child; and, in the application of this analogy, this House was made to play the part of the parent, and the people were left to sustain the character of the child! It was a good illustration, Sir, of the sort of reasoning by which this rule must be defended, if it is to be defended at all. But this House does not stand in loco parentis to the people of the United States. We are not their parents, masters, or guardians. We are sent here to ascertain their wishes; to carry out their will; to do their work. And for us to undertake to limit their liberty to address us, or abridge their privilege of being heard here, on any subjects on which they may choose to be heard, is to reverse entirely our relative positions. It is the representative instructing the constituent; the agent prescribing terms to his principal; the servant imposing conditions on the master! I shall be told that individual petitioners are not the people; and that the rights of the signers of petitions, few or many, are not to be confounded with the rights of the people at large. There would be some fitness and some force in this suggestion, if we were considering the reception of a single petition, or of any ascertained number of petitions. But where is the limit to this rule? Where is the limit to the principle of this rule? Why, Sir, this rule excludes, practically and daily, thousands and hundreds of thousands of petitioners. It denies a hearing, practically and daily, to whole States-sovereign States -speaking through the resolutions of their Legislatures. The Journals, I think, will show that the resolutions of four or five States have been thrust back into the faces of their representatives on this floor, in a single hour of a single morning. And if as many States as were arrayed here the other day on the subject of General Jackson's fine, seventeen, I think,— could come to a common opinion on any point connected with any one of the subjects enumerated in this rule, — nay, if all the States in the Union, or all the people of all the States, could come, as they ought to come, and as I believe that one day or other they will come, to the conclusion, that whatever may be done with the institution of slavery in the District of Columbia, the slave trade here shall be no more tolerated, but that this metropolis of the American Republic shall be purged from the pollu tion of an inhuman and abominable traffic, this rule is broad enough, and general enough, to deny a hearing to them all! In principle, then, this rule goes the full length of asserting the - right of this House, to say to the people, to the whole people of the Union. -"Come one, come all, we will not hear you." But, says the gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Rhett,) have we not a plenary power, under the Constitution, "to determine our own rules of proceeding?" Yes, Sir, we have that power, and there is no appeal from our determination as to those rules. But power is one thing, and right is another. We have the power to do many things in this House which we have yet no manner of right to do. We are the final judges of the elections and returns of our own members. And if a majority in this House, in its wilfulness or its wantonness, should see fit to give the seat in a contested election to a candidate clearly in a minority, or to admit to a right of membership on this floor persons under twenty-five years of age, or who have resided less than seven years in the United States, or persons who do not possess any other of the constitutional or legal qualifications of members,—and something of this sort has been done, as I think, at this very session, there is no power elsewhere to revise or reverse our decision. We have the power, also, to adopt a rule of proceeding by which the yeas and nays shall not be recorded on a call of one fifth of the members present, or shall not be recorded at all; and, indeed, a majority of this House almost went this length at the outset of the session, in excluding from the records a full and intelligible statement of a question on which the yeas and nays were demanded and taken. We have the power, too, to suppress or expunge from our Journals any proceedings which we may not fancy to have the people find recorded there; and this proceeding, again, is not entirely unknown to this Capitol, or even to this House during the present session. But who can assert that we have any right to resort to such measures, in defiance of express provisions of the Constitution? Sir, it is plain that this power to determine the rules of our own proceeding must be held in subordination to other provisions of the Constitution, and must be exercised also with a due regard to the rights, the reserved or inherent rights, of the people. Our power over our own rules of proceeding is, indeed, an irresponsible power. But this consideration should only make us the more anxious to ascertain what is its rightful and constitutional |