I may be told perhaps that the restriction, in this case, is the act of Missouri itself; that your law is nothing without its consent, and derives its efficacy from that alone. I shall have a more suitable occasion to speak on this topic hereafter, when I come to consider the treaty which ceded Louisiana to the United States. But I will say a few words upon it now of a more general application than it will in that branch of the argument be necessary to use. that when you consent to admit into this Union | bear-without any other extinction of power a new State you can make it less in sovereign | than is the work of the constitution acting inpower than the original parties to that Union differently upon all. -that you can make the Union as to it what it is not as to them—that you can fashion it to your liking by compelling it to purchase admission into a Union by sacrificing a portion of that power which it is the sole purpose of the Union to maintain in all the plenitude which the Union itself does not impair? Does it follow that you can force upon it an additional compact not found in the compact of Unionthat you can make it come into the Union less a State, in regard to sovereign power, than its fellows in that Union-that you can cripple its legislative competency, (beyond the constitu- | tion which is the pact of Union, to which you make it a party as if it had been originally a party to it,) by what you choose to call a condition, but which, whatever it may be called, brings the new government into the Union under new obligations to it, and with disparaged power to be protected by it? In a word, the whole amount of the argument on the other side, is-that you may refuse to admit a new State, and that therefore if you admit, you may prescribe the terms. The answer to that argument is that even if you can refuse, you can prescribe no terms which are inconsistent with the act you are to do. You can prescribe no conditions which, if carried into effect, would make the new State less a sovereign State than, under the Union as it stands, it would be. You can prescribe no terms which will make the compact of Union between it and the original States essentially different from that compact among the original States. You may admit, or refuse to admit but if you admit, you must admit a State in the sense of the constitution-a State with all such sovereignty as belongs to the original parties: and it must be into this Union that you are to admit it, not into a Union of your own dictating, formed out of the existing Union by qualifications and new compacts, altering its character and effect, and making it fall short of its protecting energy in reference to the new State, whilst it acquires an energy of another sort the energy of restraint and destruction. A territory cannot surrender to Congress by anticipation, the whole, or part, of the sovereign power, which, by the constitution of the Union, will belong to it when it becomes a State and a member of the Union. Its consent is, therefore, nothing. It is in no situation to make this surrender. It is under the government of Congress; if it can barter away a part of its sovereignty, by anticipation, it can do so as to the whole. For where will you stop? If it does not cease to be a State, in the sense of the constitution, with only a certain portion of sovereign power, what other smaller portion will have that effect? If you depart from the standard of the constitution, i. e. the quantity of domestic sovereignty left in the first contracting States, and secured by the original compact of Union, where will you get another standard? Consent is no standard,for consent may be gained to a surrender of all. No State or Territory, in order to become a State, can alienate or surrender any portion of its sovereignty to the Union, or to a sister State, or to a foreign nation. It is under an incapacity to disqualify itself for all the purposes of government left to it in the constitution, by stripping itself of attributes which arise from the natural equality of States, and which the constitution recognizes, not only because it does not deny them, but presumes them to remain as they exist by the law of nature and nations. Inequality in the sovereignty of States is unnatural, and repugnant to all the principles of that law. Hence we find it laid down by the text-writers on public law, that "Nature has established a perfect I have thus endeavored to show, that even equality of rights between independent nations" if you have a discretion to refuse to admit--and that "whatever the quality of a free sovyou have no discretion, if you are willing to admit, to insist upon any terms that impair the sovereignty of the admitted State as it would otherwise stand in the Union by the constitution which receives it into its bosom. To admit or not, is for you to decide. Admission once conceded, it follows as a corollary that you must take the new State as an equal companion with its fellows-that you cannot recast or new model the Union pro hac vice-but that you must receive it into the actual Union, and recognize it as a parcener in the common inheritance, without any other shackles than rest have, by the constitution, submitted to ereign nation gives to one, it gives to another."* The constitution of the United States proceeds upon the truth of this doctrine. It takes the States as it finds them, free and sovereign alike by nature. It receives from them portions of their power for the general good, and provides for the exercise of it by organized political bodies. It diminishes the individual sovereignty of each, and transfers, what it subtracts, to the government which it creates: it takes from all alike, and leaves them relatively to each other equal in sovereign power. * Vattel, Droit des Gens, liv. 2, c. 8, s. 86. The honorable gentleman from New York | (the advocates of this restriction who desire has put the constitutional argument altogether change by unconstitutional means, or its oppoupon the clause relative to admission of new nents who desire to leave the whole matter to States into the Union. He does not pretend local regulation,) are the only questions worthy that you can find the power to restrain, in any of attention. extent, elsewhere. It follows that it is not a particular power to impose this restriction, but a power to impose restrictions ad libitum. It is competent to this, because it is competent to every thing. But he denies that there can be any power in man to hold in slavery his fellowcreature, and argues, therefore, that the prohibition is no restraint at all, since it does not interfere with the sovereign powers of Missouri. One of the most signal errors with which the argument on the other side has abounded, is this of considering the proposed restriction as if levelled at the introduction or establishment of slavery. And hence the vehement declamation, which, among other things, has informed us that slavery originated in fraud or violence. The truth is, that the restriction has no relation, real or pretended, to the right of making slaves of those who are free, or of introducing slavery where it does not already exist. It applies to those who are admitted to be already slaves, and who (with their posterity) would continue to be slaves if they should remain | where they are at present; and to a place where slavery already exists by the local law. Their civil condition will not be altered by their removal from Virginia, or Carolina, to Missouri. They will not be more slaves than they now are. Their abode, indeed, will be different, but their bondage the same. Their numbers may possibly be augmented by the diffusion, and I think they will. But this can only happen because their hardships will be mitigated, and their comforts increased. The checks to population, which exist in the older States, will be diminished. The restriction, therefore, does not prevent the establishment of slavery, either with reference to persons or place; but simply inhibits the removal from place to place (the law in each being the same) of a slave, or make his emancipation the consequence of that removal. It acts professedly merely on slavery as it exists, and thus acting restrains its present lawful effects. That slavery, like many other human institutions, originated in fraud or violence, may be conceded: but, however it originated, it is established among us, and no man seeks a further establishment of it by new importations of freemen to be converted into slaves. On the contrary, all are anxious to mitigate its evils, by all the means within the reach of the appropriate authority, the domestic legislatures of the different States. It can be nothing to the purpose of this argument, therefore, as the gentlemen themselves have shaped it, to inquire what was the origin of slavery. What is it now, and who are they tha endeavor to innovate upon what it now is, Sir, if we too closely look to the rise and progress of long sanctioned establishments and unquestioned rights, we may discover other subjects than that of slavery, with which fraud and violence may claim a fearful connection, and over which it may be our interest to throw the mantle of oblivion. What was the settlement of our ancestors in this country but an invasion of the rights of the barbarians who inhabited it? That settlement, with slight exceptions, was effected by the slaughter of those who did no more than defend their native land against the intruders of Europe, or by unequal compacts and purchases, in which feebleness and ignorance had to deal with power and cunning. The savages who once built their huts where this proud Capitol, rising from its recent ashes, exemplifies the sovereignty of the American people, were swept away by the injustice of our fathers, and their domain usurped by force, or obtained by artifices yet more criminal. Our continent was full of those aboriginal inhabitants. Where are they or their descendants? Either "with years beyond the flood," or driven back by the swelling tide of our population from the borders of the Atlantic to the deserts of the West. You follow still the miserable remnants, and make contracts with them that seal their ruin. You purchase their lands, of which they know not the value, in order that you may sell them to advantage, increase your treasure, and enlarge your empire. Yet further-you pursue as they retire; and they must continue to retire until the Pacific shall stay their retreat, and compel them to pass away as a dream. Will you recur to those scenes of various iniquity for any other purpose than to regret and lament them? Will you pry into them with a view to shake and impair your rights of property and dominion? But the broad denial of the sovereign right of Missouri, if it shall become a sovereign State, to recognize slavery by its laws, is rested upon a variety of grounds, all of which I will examine. It is an extraordinary fact, that they who urge this denial with such ardent zeal, stop short of it in their conduct. There are now slaves in Missouri whom they do not insist upon delivering from their chains. Yet if it is incompetent to sovereign power to continue slavery in Missouri, in respect of slaves who may yet be carried thither; show me the power that can continue it in respect of slaves who are there already. Missouri is out of the old limits of the Union, and beyond those limits, it is said, we can give no countenance to slavery, if we can countenance or tolerate it any where. It is plain, that there can be no slaves beyond the Mississippi at this affecting to have no fear whatever of his adversary, is, nevertheless, careful to admonish Sir Lucius to hold him fast. Let us take it for granted, however, that they are in earnest in their doctrine, and that it is very necessary to impose what they prove to be an unnecessary restraint: how do they support that doctrine? The honorable gentleman on the other side* has told us as a proof of his great position, (that man cannot enslave his fellow man, in which is implied that all laws upholding slavery are absolute nullities,) that the nations of antiquity, as well as of modern times, have concurred in laying down that position as incontrovertible. moment, but in virtue of some power to make | duelist in Sheridan's comedy of the rivals, who or keep them so. What sort of power was it that has made or kept them so? Sovereign power it could not be, according to the honorable gentlemen from Pennsylvania and New Hampshire:* and if sovereign power is unequal to such a purpose, less than sovereign power is yet more unequal to it. The laws of Spain and France could do nothing-the laws of the territorial government of Missouri could do nothing towards such a result, if it be a result which no laws, in other words, no sovereignty, could accomplish. The treaty of 1803 could do no more, in this view, than the laws of France, or Spain, or the territorial government of Missouri. A treaty is an act of sovereign power, taking the shape of a compact between the parties to it; and that which sovereign power cannot reach at all, it cannot reach by a treaty. | Those who are now held in bondage, therefore, in Missouri, and their issue, are entitled to be free, if there be any truth in the doctrine of the honorable gentlemen; and if the proposed restriction leaves all such in slavery, it thus discredits the very foundation on which it reposes. To be inconsistent is the fate of false principles-but this inconsistency is the more to be remarked, since it cannot be referred to mere considerations of policy, without admitting that such considerations may be preferred (without a crime) to what is deemed a paramount and indispensable duty. It is here, too, that I must be permitted to observe, that the honorable gentlemen have taken great pains to show that this restriction is a mere work of supererogation by the principal argument on which they rest the proof of its propriety. Missouri, it is said, can have no power to do what the restriction would prevent. It would be void, therefore, without the restriction. Why then, I ask, is the restriction insisted upon? Restraint implies that there is something to be restrained: But the gentlemen justify the restraint by showing that there is nothing upon which it can operate! They demonstrate the wisdom and necessity of restraint, by demonstrating that with or without restraint, the subject is in the same predicament. This is to combat with a man of straw, and to put fetters upon a shadow. The gentlemen must, therefore, abandon either their doctrine or their restriction-their argument or their object-for they are directly in conflict, and reciprocally destroy each other. It is evident, that they will not abandon their object, and of course, I must believe, that they hold their argument in as little real estimation as I myself do. The gentlemen can scarcely be sincere believers in their own principle. They have apprehensions, which they endeavor to conceal, that Missouri, as a State, will have power to continue slavery within its limits; and, if they will not be offended, I will venture to compare them, in this particular, with the *Mr. Roberts, Mr. Lowrie, and Mr. Morril. He refers us in the first place to the Roman law, in which he finds it laid down as a maxim: "Jure naturali omnes homines ab initio liberi nasebantur." From the manner in which this maxim was pressed upon us, it would not readily have been conjectured that the honorable gentleman who used it had borrowed it from a slave-holding empire, and still less from a book of the Institutes of Justinian, which treats of slavery, and justifies, and regulates it. Had he given us the context, we should have had the modifications of which the abstract doctrine was in the judgment of the Roman laws susceptible. We should have had an explanation of the competency of that law, to convert, whether justly or unjustly, freedom into servitude, and to maintain the right of a master to the service and obedience of his slave. The honorable gentleman might also have gone to Greece for a similar maxim and a similar commentary, speculative and practical. He next refers us to Magna Charta. I am somewhat familiar with Magna Charta, and I am confident that it contains no such maxim as the honorable gentleman thinks he has discovered in it. The great charter was extorted from John, and his feeble son and successor, by haughty slave-holding barons, who thought only of themselves and the commons of England, (then inconsiderable,) whom they wished to enlist in their efforts against the crown. There is not in it a single word which condemns civil slavery. Freemen only are the objects of its protecting care. "Nullus liber homo," is its phraseology. The serfs, who were chained to the soil-the villeins regardant and in gross, were left as it found them. All England was then full of slaves, whose posterity would by law remain slaves as with us, except only that the issue followed the condition of the father instead of the mother. The rule was "Partus sequitur patrem"-a rule more favorable, undoubtedly, from the very precariousness of its application, to the gradual extinction of slavery, than ours, which has been drawn from the Roman law, and is of sure and unavoidable effect. * Mr. King. 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. 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 ! 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 aboli-wide-spread desolation. But it is given to tion 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. 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 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 be bound for ever by this restriction; and upon the same principle, any other restriction may be imposed. Where then is their power to change the constitution, and to devolve new sovereignty upon the State government? You limit their sovereign capacity to do it; and when you talk of a State, you mean the people as well as the government. The people are the source of all power-you dry up that source. They are the reservoir-you take out of it what suits you. 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 upon 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 another and a different act in its place. The proposition contained in the clause is universal in one sense only. It is particular in another. It is universal as to the power to admit or refuse. It is particular as to the being or thing to be admitted, and the compact by which it is to be admitted. The sophistry consists in extending the universal part of the proposition in such a manner as to make out of it another universal proposition. It consists in confounding the right to produce or to refuse to produce a certain defined effect, with a right 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. But discarding the machinery of syllogisms as unfit for such a discussion as this, let us look at the clause with a view of interpreting it by the rules of sound logic and common sense. The The power is "to admit new States into this Union;" and it may be safely conceded that here is discretion to admit or refuse. question is, what must we do if we do any thing? What must we admit, and into what? The answer is a State-and into this Union. The distinction between federal rights and local rights, is an idle distinction. Because the new State acquires federal rights, it is not, 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 contributions of power. Make one member sacrifice more than another, and it becomes unequal. The compact is of two parts, 1. The thing obtained-federal rights. 2. The price paid-local sovereignty. You may disturb the balance of the Union, either by diminishing the thing acquired, or increasing the sacrifice paid. What were the purposes of coming into the Union among the original States? The States were originally sovereign without limit, as to foreign and domestic concerns. But being incapable of protecting themselves singly, they entered into the Union to defend themselves against foreign violence. The domestic concerns of the people were not, in general, to be acted on by it. The security of the power, of managing them by domestic legislature, is one |