when history shall have passed her stern sentence on the erring men who have driven their unoffending brethren from the shelter of their common home, your names will derive fresh lustre from the contrast; and when your children shall hear repeated the familiar tale, it will be with glowing cheek and kindling eye; their very souls will stand a-tiptoe as their sires are named, and they will glory in their lineage from men of spirit as generous and of patriotism as high-hearted as ever illustrated or adorned the American Senate.

SLAVERY AS ESTABLISHED BY LAW (Delivered in the United States Senate, March 11th, 1858)

Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species of property there recognized as requiring peculiar protection?  Sir, the inventive genius of our brethren of the North is a source of vast wealth to them and vast benefit to the nation.  I saw a short time ago in one of the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents now before us in this capitol for renewal was $40,000,000.  I cannot believe that the entire capital invested in inventions of this character in the United States can fall short of one hundred and fifty or two hundred million dollars.  On what protection does this vast property rest?  Just upon that same constitutional protection which gives a remedy to the slave-owner when his property is also found outside of the limits of the State in which he lives.

Without this protection what would be the condition of the Northern inventor?  Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law would come to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had stolen his property, “Render me up my property, or pay me value for its use.”  The Senator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he were the counsel of this Vermont inventor:  “Sir, if you want protection for your property go to your own State; property is governed by the laws of the State within whose jurisdiction it is found; you have no property in your invention outside of the limits of your State; you cannot go an inch beyond it.”  Would not this be so?  Does not every man see at once that the right of the inventor to his discovery, that the right of the poet to his inspiration, depends upon those principles of eternal justice which God has implanted in the heart of man; and that wherever he cannot exercise them, it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received from God, denies them the protection to which they are entitled?

Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senator from Vermont himself has given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a horse riding him across the line into Pennsylvania.  The Senator says, “Now you see that slaves are not property, like other property; if slaves were property like other property, why have you this special clause in your Constitution to protect a slave?  You have no clause to protect a horse, because horses are recognized as property everywhere.”  Mr. President,