distinct in their nature, and, in interpreting and exercising the grant of the power of exclusive legislation, that distinction should be constantly borne in mind. Is it necessary, in order to render this place a comfortable seat of the general government, to abolish slavery within its limits? No one can or will advance such a proposition. The government has remained here near forty years without the slightest inconvenience from the presence of domestic slavery. Is it necessary to the well-being of the people of the District, that slavery should be abolished from amongst them? They not only neither ask nor desire, but are almost unanimously opposed to it. It exists here in the mildest and most mitigated form. In a population of 39,834, there were, at the last enumeration of the population of the United States, but 6,119 slaves. The number has not probably much increased since. They are dispersed over the ten miles square, engaged in the quiet pursuits of husbandry, or in menial offices in domestic life. If it were necessary to the efficiency of this place as a seat of the general government, to abolish slavery, which is utterly denied, the abolition should be confined to the necessity which prompts it, that is, to the limits of the city of Washington itself. Beyond those limits, persons concerned in the government of the United States have no more to do with the inhabitants of the District, than they have with the inhabitants of the adjacent counties of Maryland and Virginia which lie beyond the District.

To abolish slavery within the District of Columbia, whilst it remains in Virginia and Maryland, situated as that District is, within the very heart of those States, would expose them to great practical inconvenience and annoyance. The District would become a place of refuge and escape for fugitive slaves from the two States, and a place from which a spirit of discontent, insubordination and insurrection, might be fostered and encouraged in the two States. Sup

pose, as was at one time under consideration, Pennsylvania had granted ten miles square within its limits, for the purpose of a seat of the general government: could Congress, without a violation of good faith, have introduced and established slavery within the bosom of that Commonwealth in the ceded territory, after she had abolished it so long ago as the year 1780? Yet the inconvenience to Pennsylvania in the case supposed, would have been much less than that to Virginia and Maryland, in the case we are arguing.

It was upon this view of the subject that the Senate, at its last session, solemnly declared, that it would be a violation of implied faith, resulting from the transaction of the cession, to abolish slavery within the District of Columbia. And would it not be? By implied faith, is meant, that when a grant is made for one avowed and declared purpose, known to the parties, the grant should not be perverted to another purpose, unavowed and undeclared, and injurious to the grantor. The grant in the case we are considering, of the territory of Columbia, was for a seat of government. Whatever power is necessary to accomplish that object, is carried along by the grant. But the abolition of slavery, is not necessary to the enjoyment of this site as a seat of the general government. The grant in the Constitution of exclusive power of legislation over the District, was made to insure the exercise of an exclusive authority of the general government, to render this place a safe and secure seat of government, and to promote the well-being of the inhabi tants of the District. The power granted ought to be interpreted and exercised solely to the end for which it was granted. The language of the grant was necessarily broad, comprehensive, and exclusive, because all the exigencies which might arise to render this a secure seat of the general government, could not have been foreseen and provided for. The language may possibly be sufficiently comprehensive to include a power of abolition; but it would not at

all thence follow, that the power could be rightfully exercised. The case may be resembled to that of a plenipotentiary invested with a plenary power, but who at the same time has positive instructions from his government as to the kind of treaty which he is to negotiate and conclude. If he violates those instructions, and concludes a different treaty, his government is not bound by it; and if the foreign government is aware of the violation, it acts in bad faith. Or it may be illustrated by an example drawn from private life. I am an endorser for my friend on a note discounted in bank. He applies to me to endorse another, to renew it, which I do, in blank. Now, this gives him power to make any other use of my note which he pleases. But if, instead of applying it to the intended purpose, he goes to a broker and sells it, thereby doubling my responsibility for him, he commits a breach of trust, and a violation of the good faith implied in the whole transaction.

The first impediment is the utter and absolute want of all power on the part of the general government to effect the purpose. The Constitution of the United States creates a limited government, comprising comparatively few powers, and leaving the residuary mass of political power in the possession of the several States. It is well known that the subject of slavery interposed one of the greatest difficulties in the formation of the Constitution. It was happily compromised and adjusted in a spirit of harmony and patriotism. According to that compromise, no power whatever was granted to the general government in respect to domestic slavery, but that which relates to taxation and representation, and the power to restore fugitive slaves to their lawful owners. All other power in regard to the institution of slavery was retained exclusively by the States, to be exercised by them severally, according to their respective views of their own peculiar interest. The Constitution of the

United States never could have been formed upon the principle of investing the general government with authority to abolish the institution at its pleasure. It never can be continued for a single day if the exercise of such a power be assumed or usurped.

But it may be contended by these ultra-abolitionists that their object is not to stimulate the action of the general government, but to operate upon the States themselves in which the institution of domestic slavery exists. If that be their object, why are these abolition societies and movements all confined to the free States? Why are the slave States wantonly and cruelly assailed? Why do the abolition presses teem with publications tending to excite hatred and animosity on the part of the inhabitants of the free States against those of the slave States? Why is Congress petitioned ? The free States have no more power or right to interfere with institutions in the slave States, confided to the exclusive jurisdiction of those States, than they would have to interfere with institutions existing in any foreign. country. What would be thought of the formation of societies in Great Britain, the issue of numerous inflammatory publications, and the sending out of lecturers throughout the kingdom, denouncing and aiming at the destruction of any of the institutions of France? Would they be regarded as proceedings warranted by a good neighborhood? Or what would be thought of the formation of societies in the slave States, the issue of violent and inflammatory tracts, and the deputation of missionaries, pouring out impassioned denunciations against institutions under the exclusive control of the free States? Is their purpose to appeal to our understandings, and to actuate our humanity? And do they expect to accomplish that purpose by holding us up to the scorn, and contempt, and detestation of the people of the free States and the whole civilized world? The slavery which exists amongst us is our affair, not theirs; and they have no more

just concern with it than they have with slavery as it exists throughout the world. Why not leave it to us, as the common Constitution of our country has left it, to be dealt with, under the guidance of Providence, as best we may or can?

I know that there is a visionary dogma which holds that negro slaves cannot be the subject of property. I shall not dwell long with this speculative abstraction. That is property which the law declares to be property. Two hundred years of legislation have sanctioned and sanctified negro slaves. as property. Under all the forms of government which have existed upon this continent during that long space of time-under the British government-under the colonial government-under all the State constitutions and governments and under the federal government itself-they have been deliberately and solemnly recognized as the legitimate subjects of property. To the wild speculations of theorists and innovators stands opposed the fact, that in an uninterrupted period of two hundred years' duration, under every form of human legislation, and by all the departments of human government, African negro slaves have been held and respected, have descended and been transferred, as lawful and indisputable property. They were treated as property in the very British example which is so triumphantly appealed to as worthy of our imitation. Although the West India planters had no voice in the united Parliament of the British Isles, an irresistible sense of justice extorted from that legislature the grant of twenty millions of pounds sterling to compensate the colonists for their loss of property.

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Sir, I am not in the habit of speaking lightly of the possibility of dissolving this happy Union. The Senate knows that I have deprecated allusions on ordinary occasions to that direful event. The country will testify that if there be anything in the history of my public career worthy of re