Still less has the petition of right, presented to Charles I., by the long Parliament, to do with the subject of civil slavery. It looked merely, as Magna Charta had not done before it, to the freemen of England-and sought only to protect them against royal prerogative and the encroaching spirit of the Stuarts. As to the bill of rights, enacted by the Convention Parliament of 1688, it is almost a duplicate of the petition of right, and arose out of the recollection of that political tyranny from which the nation had just escaped, and the recurrence of which it was intended to prevent. It contains no abstract principles. It deals only with practical checks upon the power of the monarch, and in safeguards for institutions essential to the preservation of the public liberty. That it was not designed to anathematize civil slavery may be taken for granted, since at that epoch, and long afterwards, the English government inundated its foreign plantations with slaves, and supplied other nations with them as merchandise, under the sanction of solemn treaties negotiated for that purpose. And here I cannot forbear to remark that we owe it to that same government, when it stood towards us in the relation of parent to child, that involuntary servitude exists in our land, and that we are now deliberating whether the prerogative of correcting its evils belongs to the national or the State governments. In the early periods of our colonial history, every thing was done by the mother country to encourage the importation of slaves into North America, and the measures which were adopted by the Colonial Assemblies to prohibit it, were uniformly negatived by the crown. It is not therefore our fault, nor the fault of our ancestors, that this calamity has been entailed upon us; and notwithstanding the ostentation with which the loitering abolition of the slave trade by the British parliament has been vaunted, the principal consideration which at last reconciled it to that measure was, that by suitable care, the slave population in their West India islands (already fully stocked) might be kept up and even increased without the aid of importation. In a word, it was cold calculations of interest, and not the suggestions of humanity, or a respect for the philanthropic principles of Mr. Wilberforce, which produced their tardy abandonment of that abominable traffic. Of the declaration of our independence, which has also been quoted in support of the perilous doctrines now urged upon us, I need not now speak at large. I have shown on a former occasion how idle it is to rely upon that instrument for such a purpose, and I will not fatigue you by mere repetition. The selfevident truths announced in the declaration of independence are not truths at all, if taken literally; and the practical conclusions contained in the same passage of that declaration prove that they were never designed to be so received. The articles of confederation contain nothing on the subject; whilst the actual constitution recognizes the legal existence of slavery by various provisions. The power of prohibiting the slave trade is involved in that of regulating commerce, but this is coupled with an express inhibition to the exercise of it for twenty years. How then can that constitution which expressly permits the importation of slaves, authorize the national government to set on foot a crusade against slavery? The clause respecting fugitive slaves is affirmative and active in its effects. It is a direct sanction and positive protection of the right of the master to the services of his slave as derived under the local laws of the States. The phraseology in which it is wrapped up still leaves the intention clear, and the words, persons held to service or labor in one State under the_laws thereof," have always been interpreted to extend to the case of slaves, in the various acts of Congress which have been passed to give efficacy to the provision, and in the judicial application of those laws. So also in the clause prescribing the ratio of representation-the phrase, "three-fifths of all other persons," is equivalent to slaves, or it means nothing. And yet we are told that those who are acting under a constitution which sanctions the existence of slavery in those States which choose to tolerate it, are at liberty to hold that no law can sanction its existence ! It is idle to make the rightfulness of an act the measure of sovereign power. The distinction between sovereign power and the moral right to exercise it, has always been recognized. All political power may be abused, but is it to stop where abuse may begin? The power of declaring war is a power of vast capacity for mischief, and capable of inflicting the most wide-spread desolation. But it is given to Congress without stint and without measure. Is a citizen, or are the courts of justice to inquire whether that, or any other law, is just, before they obey or execute it? And are there any degrees of injustice which will withdraw from sovereign power the capacity of making a given law? But sovereignty is said to be deputed power. Deputed-by whom? By the people, because the power is theirs. And if it be theirs, does not the restriction take it away? Examine the constitution of the Union, and it will be seen that the people of the States are regarded as well as the States themselves. The constitution was made by the people, and ratified by the people. Is it fit, then, to hold that all the sovereignty of a State is in the government of the State? So much is there as the people grant: and the people can take it away, or give more, or new model what they have already granted. It is this right which the proposed restriction takes from Missouri. You give them an immortal constitution, depending on your will, not on theirs. The people and their posterity are to 124 be bound for ever by this restriction; and | another and a different act in its place. The upon the same principle, any other restriction proposition contained in the clause is universal may be imposed. Where then is their power in one sense only. It is particular in another. to change the constitution, and to devolve new It is universal as to the power to admit or sovereignty upon the State government? You refuse. It is particular as to the being or thing limit their sovereign capacity to do it; and to be admitted, and the compact by which it is when you talk of a State, you mean the people to be admitted. The sophistry consists in exas well as the government. The people are the tending the universal part of the proposition source of all power-you dry up that source. in such a manner as to make out of it another They are the reservoir-you take out of it universal proposition. It consists in confoundwhat suits you. a certain defined effect, with a right to produce ing the right to produce or to refuse to produce a different effect by refusing otherwise to produce any effect at all. It makes the actual right the instrument of obtaining another right with which the actual right is incompatible. It makes, in a word, lawful power the instrument of unlawful usurpation. The result is kept out of sight by this mode of reasoning. The discretion to decline that result, which is called a universal proposition, is singly obtruded upon us. But in order to reason correctly, you must keep in view the defined result, as well as the discretion to produce or to decline to produce it. The result is the particular part of the proposition; therefore, the discretion to produce or decline it, is the universal part of it. But because the last is found to be universal, it is taken for granted that the first is also universal. This is a sophism too manifest to impose. It is said that this government is a government of deputed powers. So is every government-and what power is not deputed remains. But the people of the United States can give it more if they please, as the people of each State can do in respect to its own government. And here it is well to remember that this is a government of enumerated, as well as deputed powers, and to examine the clause as to the admission of new States, with that principle in view. Now assume that it is a part of the sovereign power of the people of Missouri to continue slavery, and to devolve that power apon its government-and then to take it away -and then to give it again. The government is their creature-the means of exercising their sovereignty, and they can vary those means at their pleasure. Independently of the Union, their power would be unlimited. By coming into the Union, they part with some of it, and are thus less sovereign. Let us then see whether they part with this power. If they have parted with this portion of sovereign power, it must be under that clause of the national constitution which gives to Congress "power to admit new States into this Union." And it is said that this necessarily implies the authority of prescribing the conditions, upon which such new States shall be admitted. This has been put into the form of a syllogism which is thus stated: Major. Every universal proposition includes all the means, manner, and terms of the act to which it relates. Minor. But this is a universal proposition. Conclusion. Therefore, the means, manner, and terms are involved in it. But this syllogism is fallacious, and any thing else may be proved by it, by assuming one of its members which involves the conclusion. The minor is a mere postulate. Take it in this way: Major. None but a universal proposition includes in itself the terms and conditions of the act to be done. Minor. But this is not such a universal proposition. Conclusion. Therefore, it does not contain in itself the terms and conditions of the act. In both cases the minor is a gratuitous postulate. But I deny that a universal proposition as to a specific act, involves the terms and conditions of that act, so as to vary it, and substitute as unfit for such a discussion as this, let us look Union;" and it may be safely conceded that The distinction between federal rights and new State acquires federal rights, it is not, local rights, is an idle distinction. Because the therefore, in this Union. The Union is a compact; and is it an equal party to that compact, because it has equal federal rights? How is the Union formed? By equal contri- 1. The thing obtained-federal rights. Union among the original States? The States 7 A -t in its place -e clause is rticular in Dower to s the being e pact by whi ry consists of the proper out of it w ists in conf refuse to pr right to p herwise tor akes the an g another r incompe er the i The res of reas Sult, whe gly obtro orrectly It, as wel line to lar part =cretion al part Se unive rst is al anifest te of the great objects of the Union. The Union | treated with that decent neglect which has at The argument that the compact may be enforced, shows that the federal predicament is changed. The power of the Union not only acts on persons or citizens, but on the faculty of the government, and restrains it in a way which the constitution no where authorizes. This new obligation takes away a right which is expressly "reserved to the people or the States," since it is no where granted to the government of the Union. You cannot do indirectly what you cannot do directly. It is said that this Union is competent to make compacts. Who doubts it? But can you make this compact? I insist that you cannot make it, because it is repugnant to the thing to be done. The effect of such a compact would be to produce that inequality in the Union, to which the constitution, in all its provisions, is adverse. Every thing in it looks to equality among the members of the Union. Under it, you cannot produce inequality. Nor can you get beforehand of the constitution, and do it by anticipation. Wait until a State is in the Union, and you cannot do it: yet it is only upon the State in the Union that what you do begins to act. * * * * * * * * least the merit of forbearing to render contumacy obtrusive by an ostentatious display of the very duty which we in part abandon. If the decalogue could be observed in this casuistical manner, we might be grievous sinners, and yet be liable to no reproach. We might persist in all our habitual irregularities, and still be spotless. We might, for example, continue to covet our neighbors' goods, provided they were the same neighbors whose goods we had before coveted-and so of all the other commandments. Will the gentlemen tell us that it is the quantity of slaves, not the quality of slavery, which takes from a government the republican form? Will they tell us (for they have not yet told us) that there are constitutional grounds (to say nothing of common sense) upon which the slavery which now exists in Missouri may be reconciled with a republican form of government, while any addition to the number of its slaves (the quality of slavery remaining the same) from the other States, will be repugnant to that form, and metamorphose it into some nondescript government disowned by the constitution? They cannot have recourse to the treaty of 1803 for such a distinction, since independently of what I have before observed on that head, the gentlemen have contended that the treaty has nothing to do with the matter. They have cut themselves off from all chance of a convenient distinction in or out of that But it seems, that although the proposed treaty, by insisting that slavery beyond the old restriction may not be justified by the clause United States is rejected by the constitution, of the constitution which gives power to admit and by the law of God as discoverable by the new States into the Union, separately consid-aid of either reason or revelation; and moreered, there are other parts of the constitution over that the treaty does not include the case, which, combined with that clause, will warrant and if it did could not make it better. They it. And first, we are informed that there is a have therefore completely discredited their own clause in this instrument which declares that theory by their own practice, and left us no Congress shall guarantee to every State a re- theory worthy of being seriously controverted. publican form of government; that slavery This peculiarity in reasoning of giving out a and such a form of government are incompati-universal principle, and coupling with it a pracble; and finally, as a conclusion from these tical concession that it is wholly fallacious, has premises, that Congress not only have a right, indeed run through the greater part of the but are bound to exclude slavery from a new arguments on the other side; but it is not, as I State. Here again, sir, there is an edifying in- think, the more imposing on that account, or consistency between the argument and the the less liable to the criticism which I have measure which it professes to vindicate. By here bestowed upon it. the argument it is maintained that Missouri cannot have a republican form of government, and at the same time tolerate negro slavery. By the measure it is admitted that Missouri may tolerate slavery, as to persons already in bondage there, and be nevertheless fit to be received into the Union. What sort of constitutional mandate is this which can thus be made to bend, and truckle, and compromise as if it were a simple rule of expediency that might admit of exceptions upon motives of countervailing expediency. There can be no such pliancy in the peremptory provisions of the constitution. They cannot be obeyed by moieties and violated in the same ratio. They must be followed out to their full extent, or There is a remarkable inaccuracy on this branch of the subject into which the gentlemen have fallen, and to which I will give a moment's attention without laying unnecessary stress upon it. The government of a new State, as well as of an old State, must, I agree, be republican in its form. But it has not been very clearly explained what the laws which such a government may enact can have to do with its form. The form of the government is material only as it furnishes a security that those laws will protect and promote the public happiness, and be made in a republican spirit The people being, in such a government, the fountain of all power, and their servants being periodically responsible to them for its exercise, the consti ty was its characteristic. What else was it that foiled the whole power of Persia at Marathon and Salamis? What other soil than that which the genial sun of republican freedom illuminated and warmed, could have produced such men as Leonidas and Miltiades, Themistocles and Epaminondas? Of Rome it would be superfluous to speak at large. It is sufficient to name the mighty mistress of the world, before Sylla gave the first stab to her liberties and the great dictator accomplished their final ruin, to be reminded of the practicability of union between civil slavery and an ardent love of liberty cherished by republican establishments. tution of the Union takes for granted, (except | fundamental laws of Lycurgus, having for its so far as it imposes limitations,) that every such object the encouragement of that very spirit. exercise will be just and salutary. The intro- | Attica was full of slaves-yet the love of liberduction or continuance of civil slavery is manifestly the mere result of the power of making | laws. It does not in any degree enter into the form of the government. It presupposes that form already settled, and takes its rise not from the particular frame of the government, but from the general power which every government involves. Make the government what you will in its organization and in the distribution of its authorities, the introduction or continuance of involuntary servitude by the legislative power which it has created can have no influence on its pre-established form, whether monarchical, aristocratical, or republican. The form of government is still one thing, and the law, being a simple exertion of the ordinary faculty of legislation by those to whom that form of government has intrusted it, another. The gentlemen, however, identify an act of legislation sanctioning involuntary servitude with the form of government itself, and then assure us that the last is changed retroactively by the first, and is no longer republican! If we return home for instruction upon this point, we perceive that same union exemplified in many a State, in which "liberty has a temple in every house, an altar in every heart," while involuntary servitude is seen in every direction. Is it denied that those States possess a republican form of government? If it is, why does our power of correction sleep? Why is the constitutional guaranty suffered to be inactive? Why am I permitted to fatigue you, as the representative of a slaveholding State, with the discussion of the "nugæ canora (for so I think them) that have been forced into this debate contrary to all the remonstrances of taste and prudence? Do gentlemen perceive the consequences to which their arguments must lead if they are of any value? Do they reflect that they lead to emancipation in the old United States-or to an exclusion of Delaware, Maryland, and all the South, and a great portion of the West from the Union? My honorable friend from Virginia has no business here, if this disorganizing creed be any thing but the production of a heated brain. The State to which I belong, must "perform a lustration"-must purge and purify herself from the feculence of civil slavery, and emulate the States of the North in their zeal for throwing down the gloomy idol which we are said to worship, before her senators can have any title to appear in this high assembly. It will be in vain to urge that the old United States are exceptions to the rule-or rather (as the gentlemen express it), that they have no disposition to apply the rule to them. There can be no exceptions by implication only, to such a rule; and expressions which justify the exemption of the old States by inference, will justify the like exemption of Missouri, unless they point exclusively to them, as I have shown they do not. The guarded manner, too, in which some of the gentlemen have occasionally expressed themselves on this subject, is somewhat alarming. They have no disposition to meddle with slavery in the old United States. Perhaps not But let us proceed to take a rapid glance at the reasons which have been assigned for this notion that involuntary servitude and a republican form of government are perfect antipathies. The gentleman from New Hampshire* has defined a republican government to be that in which all the men participate in its power and privileges: from whence it follows that where there are slaves, it can have no existence. A definition is no proof, however, and even if it be dignified (as I think it was) with the name of a maxim, the matter is not much mended. It is Lord Bacon who says "that nothing is so easily made as a maxim;" and certainly a definition is manufactured with equal facility. A political maxim is the work of induction, and cannot stand against experience, or stand on any thing but experience. But this maxim, or definition, or whatever else it may be, sets fact at defiance. If you go back to antiquity, you will obtain no countenance for this hypothesis; and if you look at home you will gain still less. I have read that Sparta, and Rome, and Athens, and many others of the ancient family, were republics. They were so in form undoubtedly -the last approaching nearer to a perfect democracy than any other government which has yet been known in the world. Judging of them also by their fruits, they were of the highest order of republics. Sparta could scarcely be any other than a republic, when a Spartan matron could say to her son just marching to battle, "Return victorious, or return no more." It was the unconquerable spirit of liberty, nurtured by republican habits and institutions, that illustrated the pass of Thermopyla. Yet slavery was not only tolerated-but in Sparta, but was established by one of the • Mr. Morril. who shall answer for their successors? Who shall furnish a pledge that the principle once ingrafted into the constitution, will not grow, and spread, and fructify, and overshadow the whole land? It is the natural office of such a principle to wrestle with slavery, wheresoever it finds it. New States, colonized by the apostles of this principle, will enable it to set on foot a fanatical crusade against all who still continue to tolerate it, although no practicable means are pointed out by which they can get rid of it consistently with their own safety. At any rate, a present forbearing disposition, in a few or in many, is not a security upon which much reliance can be placed upon a subject as to which so many selfish interests and ardent feelings are connected with the cold calculations of policy. Admitting, however, that the old United States are in no danger from this principle-why is it so? There can be no other answer (which these zealous enemies of slavery can use) than that the constitution recognizes slavery as existing or capable of existing in those States. The constitution, then, admits that slavery and a republican form of government are not incongruous. It associates and binds them up together, and repudiates this wild imagination which the gentlemen have pressed upon us with such an air of triumph. But the constitution does more, as I have heretofore proved. It concedes that slavery may exist in a new State, as well as in an old one-since the language in which it recognizes slavery comprehends new States as well as actual. I trust then that I shall be forgiven if I suggest, that no eccentricity in argument can be more trying to human patience, than a formal assertion that a constitution, to which slave-holding States were the most numerous parties, in which slaves are treated as property as well as persons, and provision is made for the security of that property, and even for an augmentation of it by a temporary importation from Africa, a clause commanding Congress to guarantee a republican form of government to those very States, as well as to others, authorizes you to determine that slavery and a republican form of government cannot co-exist. But if a republican form of government is that in which all the men have a share in the public power, the slave-holding States will not alone retire from the Union. The constitutions of some of the other States do not sanction universal suffrage, or universal eligibility. They require citizenship, and age, and a certain amount of property, to give a title to vote or to be voted for; and they who have not those qualifications are just as much disfranchised, with regard to the government and its power, as if they were slaves. They have civil rights indeed (and so have slaves in a less degree;) but they have no share in the government. Their province is to obey the laws, not to assist in making them. All such States must therefore be forisfamiliated with Virginia and the rest, or change their system: For the constitution being absolutely silent on those subjects, will afford them no protection. The Union might thus be reduced from an Union to an unit. Who does not see that such conclusions flow from false notions-that the true theory of a republican government is mistaken-and that in such a government rights, political and civil, may be qualified by the fundamental law, upon such inducements as the freemen of the country deem sufficient? That civil rights may be qualified as well as political, is proved by a thousand examples. Minors, resident aliens, who are in a course of naturalization-the other sex, whether maids, or wives, or widows, furnish sufficient practical proofs of this. Again-if we are to entertain these hopeful abstractions, and to resolve all establishments into their imaginary elements in order to recast them upon some Utopian plan, and if it be true that all the men in a republican government must help to wield its power, and be equal in rights, I beg leave to ask the honorable gentleman from New Hampshire-and why not all the women? They too are God's creatures, and not only very fair but very rational creatures; and our great ancestor, if we are to give credit to Milton, accounted them the "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best;" although to say the truth he had but one specimen from which to draw his conclusion, and possibly if he had had more, would not have drawn it at all. They have, moreover, acknowledged civil rights in abundance, and upon abstract principles more than their masculine rulers allow them in fact. Some monarchies, too, do not exclude them from the throne. We have all read of Elizabeth of England, of Catharine of Russia, of Semiramis, and Zenobia, and a long list of royal and imperial dames, about as good as an equal list of royal and imperial lords. Why is it that their exclusion from the power of a popular government is not destructive of its republican character? I do not address this question to the honorable gentleman's gallantry, but to his abstraction, and his theories, and his notions of the infinite perfectibility of human institutions, borrowed from Godwin and the turbulent philosophers of France. For my own part, sir, if I may have leave to say so much in the presence of this mixed uncommon audience, I confess I am no friend to female government, unless indeed it be that which reposes on gentleness, and modesty and virtue, and feminine grace and delicacy-and how powerful a government that is, we have all of us, as I suspect, at some time or other experienced! But if the ultra republican doctrines which have now been broached should ever gain ground among us, I should not be surprised if some romantic reformer, treading in the footsteps of Mrs. Wolstoncraft, should propose to repeal our republican law salique, and claim for our wives and daughters a full participation in political power, and to add to it that domestic power, which in some families, as I have heard, is as absolute and unrepublican as any power can be. I have thus far allowed the honorable gentlemen to avail themselves of their assumption |