The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1839-03-16
From The Amesbury Morning Courier,

| MIR. EDIToR,-l have seen in several papers an
attempt to ridicule petition sent to our Legisla
ture, signed by Caroline Augusta Chase, of Lynn
and 1856 Others praying for the repeal ofa laws
which make distinction between citizens of this
Commonwealth, on account of their complexion
have been especially surprised to see this lauda.
eand truly democratic request stigmatized by pa.
tperS protesting to be the very fountain heads oil
Democracy, absurd ridiculous, and as in fact a
Ipetton in favour of anna gamation, because it asks
repeal of law, which in direct violation Of the
list article ofthe Constitution of Massachusetts de-
clares that marriage solemnized between persons
of different compilations is utterly null & void, and
renders the offspring of such marriage illeqiti-
mate.
| This law the offspring and relic of the old slave
laws of Massachusetts, ought to have been repealed
with kindred legal denominations, long since. As
preventative of marriage between white and col
ored persons, it is of no avail, as the parties can
easily evade it by passing over the state line,
These marriages have always been unlrequent
even where they are sanctioned by law; and the
effect which this unconstitutional provision can
have, is not to prevent amal9amaton, but to rivet
still closer the letters of the enslaved by giving le
gal sanction and expression to a cruel and anti
christian pre- udice which in its numberess forms
of persecution, creates and perpetuates that degra-
dalton which is imputed to the colord people as a
crme-and which furnishes the readest excuse
for the slavery of their brethren at the South 1t
is fact that a distinguished legal defender of
slavery in a southern periodical has appealed to
this law as proof that, even in Massachusetts, be-
fore the free spirit of whose Constitution, slavery
has fallen like Dagon before the Ark of Israeli
the people of color are still prescribed and degra-
ded class. The law stands therefore, directly in the
way of emancipation. So long as the southerners
can point to it on her Statute Book the anti-slave
ry testimony of Massachusetts is shorn of half its
strength.
The excitement which the petition for its repeal
produced at the present time, is ridiculous in the
extreme. 1t would seem as if people feared that
in case the Legislature listened to its prayer they
would be compelled to marry the prescribed class
willing or unwilling. Unmarried gentlemen i'm
the ladies of color, as the venerable Mr.. Weller
Senior in the Picwick papers, was, by the wild
ders and young women of forty, after the de-
mise of his helpmate Ladies in a state of sin
gle bessedness seem to anticipate visitation from
colored gentlemen as irresistible and furious as
that of the Romans to the Sabine women.
- Old men and beldames in the street,
Do prophecy upon it dangerously,
And he that speaks doth grasp the hearers wrist,
And he that hears the WHILE gives fearful action,
With wrnkled brows and mods, and rolling eyes
But if all the excitement is created by a single
petition at the present session Of the Legislature,
how has it happened that the action of the Gener-
al Court itself in 1881 has been passed over so
lightly? During the session ofthat year, bill
for the orderly solemnizaton of marriage, making
some alterations in the old law on the subject being
before the House, Hon. Mr.. Bigelow of Boston,
the present able and worthy Secretary of State
moved to strike out the clause making marriges
between whites and Indians, negroes and mulat-
Toes illegal twas opposed by Robinson of Low
eli, Gray Of Boston, and advocated by the mover,