I ask
nothing from the earnings or labors of my fellow-citizens. I wish no
man's comforts to be abridged for the enlargement of mine. For the
services rendered on all occasions, I have been always paid to my full
satisfaction. I never wished a dollar more than what the law had fixed
on. My request is, only to be permitted to sell my own property freely
to pay my own debts. To sell it, I say, and not to sacrifice it, not
to have it gobbled up by speculators to make fortunes for themselves,
leaving unpaid those who have trusted to my good faith, and myself
without resource in the last and most helpless stage of life. If
permitted to sell it in a way which will bring me a fair price, all will
be honestly and honorably paid, and a competence left for myself, and
for those who look to me for subsistence. To sell it in a way which will
offend no moral principle, and expose none to risk but the willing, and
those wishing to be permitted to take the chance of gain. To give me, in
short, that permission which you often allow to others for purposes not
more moral.
Will it be objected, that although not evil in itself, it may, as a
precedent, lead to evil? But let those who shall quote the precedent
bring their case within the same measure. Have they, as in this case,
devoted three-score years and one of their lives, uninterruptedly, to
the service of their country? Have the times of those services been as
trying as those which have embraced our Revolution, our transition from
a colonial to a free structure of government? Have the stations of their
trial been of equal importance? Has the share they have borne in holding
their new government to its genuine principles, been equally marked?
And has the cause of the distress, against which they seek a remedy,
proceeded, not merely from themselves, but from errors of the public
authorities, disordering the circulating medium, over which they had
no control, and which have, in fact, doubled and trebled debts, by
reducing, in that proportion, the value of the property which was to pay
them? If all these circumstances, which characterize the present case,
have taken place in theirs also, then follow the precedent.
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