slightly slaveholding States. The two questions of slave representation with a proportional increase of direct taxes, and of perfect equality in the Senate, were always connected together; and a large committee of compromise, consisting of one member from each State, expressly recommended that both provisions should be adopted, but neither of them with. out the other.

Such were the equivalents, directly or indirectly offered, by which the free States were induced to consent to slave representation. It was not without very considerable strug. gles that they overcame their repugnance to admitting such a principle in the construction of a republican government. Mr. Gerry, of Massachusetts, at first exclaimed against it with evident horror, but at last, he was chairman of the committee of compromise. Even the slave States them. selves, seem to have been a little embarrassed with the discordant element. A curious proof of this is given in the language of the Constitution. The ugly feature is covered as cautiously as the deformed visage of the Veiled Prophet. The words are as follows: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the States according to their respective numbers; which shall be ascertained by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to servitude for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons." In this most

elaborate sentence, a foreigner would discern no slavery. None but those already acquainted with the serpent, would be able to discover its sting.

Governor Wright, of Maryland, a contemporary of all these transactions, and a slaveholder, after delivering a eulogy upon the kindness of masters* expressed himself as follows: "The Constitution guaranties to us the services of these persons. It does not say slaves; for the feelings of the framers of that glorious instrument would not suffer them to use that word, on account of its anti-congeniality—its incongeniality to the idea of a constitution for freemen. says, ‘persons held to service, or labor.””—Governor Wright's Speech in Congress, March, 1822.

It

This high praise bestowed on the form of our constitution, reminds me of an anecdote. A clergyman in a neigh.

* It was stated, at the time, that this person frequently steamed his negroes, in order to reduce their size to an equal weight for riding race horses. This practice is understood to be common at the South.

boring State, being obliged to be absent from his parish, procured a young man to supply his place, who was very worldly in his inclinations, and very gay in his manners. When the minister returned, his people said, somewhat reproachfully," How could you provide such a man to preach for us; you might at least have left us a hypocrite.”

While all parties agreed to act in opposition to the principles of justice, they all concurred to pay homage to them by hypocrisy of language! Men are willing to try all means to appear honest, except the simple experiment of being so. It is true, there were individuals who distrusted this compromise at the time, if they did not wholly disapprove of it. It is said that Washington, as he was walking thoughtfully near the Schuylkill, was met by a member of the Convention, to whom, in the course of conversation, he acknowledged that he was meditating whether it would not be better to separate, without proposing a constitution to the people; for he was in great doubt whether the frame of government, which was now nearly completed, would be better for them, than to trust to the course of events, and await future emergencies.

This anecdote was derived from an authentic source, and I have no doubt of its truth: neither is there any doubt that Washington had in his mind this great compromise, the pivot on which the system of government was to turn.

If avarice was induced to shake hands with injustice, from the expectation of increased direct taxation upon the South, she gained little by the bargain. With the exception of two brief periods, during the French war, and the last war with England, the revenue of the United States has been raised by duties on imports. The heavy debts and expenditures of the several States, which they had been accustomed to provide for by direct taxes, and which they probably expected to see provided for by the same means in time to come, have been all paid by duties on imports. The greatest proportion of these duties are, of course, paid by the free States; for here, the poorest laborer daily consumes several articles of foreign production, of which from one-eighth to one-half the price is a tax paid to government. The clothing of the slave population increases the revenue véry little, and their food almost none at all.

Wherever free labor and slave labor exist under the same government, there must be a perpetual clashing of interests. The legislation required for one, is, in its spirit and maxims,

diametrically opposed to that required for the other. Hence Mr. Madison predicted, in the convention which formed our Federal Constitution, that the contests would be between the great geographical sections; that such had been the division, even during the war and the confederacy.

In the same convention, Charles Pinckney, a man of great sagacity, spoke of the equal representation of large and small States as a matter of slight consequence; no difficulties, he said, would ever arise on that point; the question would always be between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding interests.

If the pressure of common danger, and the sense of indi. vidual weakness, during our contest for independence, could not bring the States to mutual confidence, nothing ever can do it, except a change of character. From the adoption of the constitution to the present time, the breach has been gradually widening. The South has pursued a uniform and sagacious system of policy, which, in all its bearings, direct and indirect, has been framed for the preservation and exten sion of slave power. This system has, in the very nature of the two things, constantly interfered with the interests of the free States; and hitherto the South have always gained the victory. This has principally been accomplished by yoking all important questions together in pairs, and strenuously resisting the passage of one, unless accompanied by the other. The South was desirous of removing the seat of government from Philadelphia to Washington, because the latter is in a slave territory, where republican representatives and magistrates can bring their slaves without danger of losing them, or having them contaminated by the princi ples of universal liberty. The assumption of the State debts, likely to bring considerable money back to the North, was linked with this question, and both were carried. The admission of Maine into the Union as a free State, and of Missouri as a slave State, were two more of these Siamese twins, not allowed to be separated from cach other. A numerous smaller progeny may be found in the laying of imposts, and the successive adjustment of protection to navigation, the fisheries, agriculture, and manufactures.

There would perhaps be no harm in this system of compromises, or any objection to its continuing in infinite series, if no injustice were done to a third party, which is never heard or noticed, except for purposes of oppression.

I reverence the wisdom of our early legislators; but they certainly did very wrong to admit slavery as an element into a free constitution; and to sacrifice the known and declared rights of a third and weaker party, in order to cement a union between two stronger ones. Such an arrangement ought not, and could not, come to good. It has given the slave States a controlling power which they will always keep, so long as we remain together.

President John Adams was of opinion, that this ascendency might be attributed to an early mistake, originating in what he called the "Frankford advice." When the first Congress was summoned in Philadelphia, Doctor Rush, and two or three other eminent men of Pennsylvania, met the Massachusetts delegates at Frankford, a few miles from Philadelphia, and conjured them, as they valued the success of the common cause, to let no measure of importance appear to originate with the North, to yield precedence in all things to Virginia, and lead her if possible to commit herself to the Revolution. Above all, they begged that not a word might be said about "independence;" for that a strong prejudice already existed against the delegates from New-England, on account of a supposed design to throw off their allegiance to the mother country. "The Frankford advice" was fol. lowed. The delegates from Virginia took the lead on all occasions.

His son, John Q. Adams, finds a more substantial reason. In his speech on the Tariff, February 4, 1833, he said: "Not three days since, Mr. Clayton, of Georgia, called that species of population (viz. slaves) the machinery of the South. Now that machinery had twenty odd representatives in that hall, -not elected by the machinery, but by those who owned it. And if he should go back to the history of this government from its foundation, it would be easy to prove that its de cisions had been affected, in general, by less majorities than that. Nay, he might go farther, and insist that that very representation had ever been, in fact, the ruling power of this government."

"The history of the Union has afforded a continual proof that this representation of property, which they enjoy, as well in the election of President and Vice-President of the

* There are now twenty-five odd representatives-that is, representstives of slaven.

United States, as upon the floor of the House of Representatives, has secured to the slaveholding States the entire control of the national policy, and, almost without exception, the possession of the highest executive office of the Union. Always united in the purpose of regulating the affairs of the whole Union by the standard of the slaveholding interest, their disproportionate numbers in the electoral colleges have enabled them, in ten out of twelve quadrennial elections, to confer the Chief Magistracy upon one of their own citizens. Their suffrages at every election, without exception, have been almost exclusively confined to a candidate of their own caste. Availing themselves of the divisions which, from the nature of man, always prevail in communities entirely free, they have sought and found auxiliaries in the other quarters of the Union, by associating the passions of parties, and the ambition of individuals, with their own purposes, to establish and maintain throughout the confederated nation the slaveholding policy. The office of Vice-President, a station of high dignity, but of little other than contingent power, had been usually, by their indulgence, conceded to a citizen of the other section; but even this political courtesy was superseded at the election before the last, and both the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States were, by the preponderancy of slaveholding votes, bestowed upon citizens of two adjoining and both slaveholding States. At this moment the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Chief Justice of the United States, are all citizens of that favored portion of the united republic. The last of these offices, being under the constitution held by the tenure of good behaviour, has been honored and dignified by the occupation of the present incumbent upwards of thirty years. An overruling sense of the high responsibilities under which it is held, has effectually guarded him from permitting the sectional slaveholding spirit to ascend the tribunal of justice; and it is not difficult to discern, in this inflexible impartiality, the source of the obloquy which that same spirit has not been inactive in attempting to excite against the Supreme Court of the United States itself: and of the insuperable aversion of the votaries of nullification to encounter or abide by the de. cision of that tribunal, the true and legitimate umpire of constitutional, controverted law."

It is worthy of observation that this slave representation