SENATE.] Restriction on the State of Missouri. [FEBRUARY, 1820. fatigue you by mere repetition. The self-evi- | So much is there as the people grant: and the dent 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? 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 forever 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 condi tions 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. FEBRUARY, 1820.] Restriction on the State of Missouri. [SENATE. Conclusion. Therefore, it does not contain, | foreign and domestic concerns. But, being in in itself, the terms and conditions of the act. capable 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 of the great objects of the Union. The Union is a means not an end. By requiring greater sacrifices of domestic power, the end is sacrificed to the means. Suppose the surrender of all, or nearly all, the domestic powers of legislation were required; the means would there have swallowed up the end. 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 The argument that the compact may be en proposition in such a manner as to make out forced, shows that the federal predicament is of it another universal proposition. It consists changed. The power of the Union not only in confounding the right to produce or to refuse acts on persons and citizens, but on the faculty to produce a certain defined effect, with a right of the Government, and restrains it in a way to produce a different effect by refusing other- which the constitution nowhere authorizes. wise to produce any effect at all. It makes the This new obligation takes away a right which actual right the instrument of obtaining another is expressly "reserved to the people or the right with which the actual right is incompati-States," since it is nowhere granted to the ble. It makes, in a word, lawful power the Government of the Union. You cannot do instrument of unlawful usurpation. The result indirectly what you cannot do directly. It is is kept out of sight by this mode of reasoning. said that this Union is competent to make The discretion to decline that result, which is compacts. Who doubts it? But can you called a universal proposition, is singly obtruded make this compact? I insist that you cannot upon us. But, in order to reason correctly, make it, because it is repugnant to the thing to you must keep in view the defined result, as be done. 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 power is, "to admit new States into this Union;" and it may be safely conceded that here is discretion to admit or refuse. The 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 The effect of such a compact would be to produce that inequality in the Union, to which the constitution, in all its provisions, is averse. 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. But it seems, that, although the proposed restriction may not be justified by the clause of the constitution which gives power to admit new States into the Union, separately considered, there are other parts of the constitution which, combined with that clause, will warrant it. And first, we are informed that there is a clause in this instrument which declares that Congress shall guarantee to every State a republican form of government; that slavery and such a form of government are incompatible; and, finally, as a conclusion from these premises, that Congress not only have a right, but are bound to exclude slavery from a new State. Here, again, sir, there is an edifying inconsistency between the argument and the measure which it professes to vindicate. By 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 SENATE.] Restriction on the State of Missouri. [FEBRUARY, 1820, made to bend, and truckle, and compromise, as | government may enact can have to do with its if it were a simple rule of expediency that form. The form of the government is material might admit of exceptions upon motives of only as it furnishes a security that those laws countervailing expediency? There can be no will protect and promote the public happiness, such pliancy in the peremptory provisions of and be made in a republican spirit. The peothe constitution. They cannot be obeyed by ple being, in such a Government, the fountain moieties and violated in the same ratio. They of all power, and their servants being periodmust be followed out to their full extent, or ically responsible to them for its exercise, the treated with that decent neglect which has at Constitution of the Union takes for granted, least the merit of forbearing to render contu- (except so far as it imposes limitations,) that macy obtrusive by an ostentatious display of every such exercise will be just and salutary. the very duty which we in part abandon. If The introduction or continuance of civil slavery the Decalogue could be observed in this casuis- is manifestly the mere result of the power of tical manner, we might be grievous sinners, making laws. It does not, in any degree, enter and yet be liable to no reproach. We might into the form of the government. It presuppersist in all our habitual irregularities, and poses that form already settled, and takes its still be spotless. We might, for example, con-rise not from the particular frame of the gov tinue 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 treaty, by insisting that slavery beyond the old United States is rejected by the constitution, and by the law of God, as discoverable by the aid of either reason or revelation; and, moreover, that the treaty does not include the case, and if it did, could not make it better. They have, therefore, completely discredited their own theory by their own practice, and left us no theory worthy of being seriously controverted. This peculiarity in reasoning, of giving out a universal principle, and coupling with it a practical concession that it is wholly fallacious, has, indeed, run through the greater part of the arguments on the other side; but it is not, as I think, the more imposing on that account, or the less liable to the criticism which I have here bestowed upon it. There is a remarkable inaccuracy on this branch of the subject into which 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 ernment, 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 introduc tion or continuance of involuntary servitude by the legislative power which it has created, can have no influence on its pre-established form, whether monarchial, aristocratical, or repub lican. 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 they assure us that the latter is changed retroactively by the first, and is no longer republican. 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 antip athies. The gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. MORRILL) 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 the 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 to 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 Re FEBRUARY, 1820.] Restriction on the State of Missouri. [SENATE. public, when a Spartan matron could say to her | gentlemen have occasionally expressed themson just marching to battle, "Return victo-selves on this subject, is somewhat alarming. rious, or return no more!" It was the uncon- They have no disposition to meddle with slaquerable spirit of liberty, nurtured by repub- very in the old United States. Perhaps not; lican habits and institutions, that illustrated but who shall answer for their successors? the Pass of Thermopyla. Yet slavery was not Who shall furnish a pledge that the principle, only tolerated in Sparta, but was established by once ingrafted into the constitution, will not one of the fundamental laws of Lycurgus, hav- grow, and spread, and fructify, and overshadow ing for its object the encouragement of that the whole land? It is the natural office of such very spirit. Attica was full of slaves, yet the a principle to wrestle with slavery, wheresoever love of liberty was its characteristic. What it finds it. New States, colonized by the aposelse was it that foiled the whole power of Per-tles of this principle, will enable it to set on sia 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. 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 guarantee suffered to be inactive? Why am I permitted to fatigue you, as the representative of a slaveholding State, with the discussion of the nuga 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? 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, sir, 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 slaveholding 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. My honorable friend from Virginia, sir, has no business here, if this disorganizing creed be the production of any thing but 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 But if a republican form of government is down the gloomy idol which we are said to that in which all the men have a share in the worship, before her Senators can have any title public power, the slaveholding States will not to appear in this high assembly. It will be in alone retire from the Union. The constitutions vain to urge that the old United States are ex- of some of the other States do not sanction ceptions to the rule; or, rather, (as the gentle-universal suffrage, or universal eligibility. They men express it,) that they have no disposition require citizenship, and age, and a certain to apply the rule to them. There can be no amount of property, to give a title to vote or to exceptions, by implication only, to such a rule; and expressions which justify the exemption of the old States by inference, will justify the 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 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. SENATE.] Restriction on the State of Missouri. [FEBRUARY, 1820, 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. Their province is to obey the laws, not to assist | daughters a full participation in political power, 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 a Union to a 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, fur-pation by which a member of it might othernish sufficient practical proof of this. wise be oppressed by profligate and powerful individuals, or ambitious and unprincipled factions. I have thus far allowed the honorable gentlemen to avail themselves of their assumption that the constitutional command to guarantee to the States a republican form of government, gives power to coerce those States in the adjustment of the details of their constitutions upon theoretical speculations. But, surely, it is passing strange that any man, who thinks at all, can view this salutary command as the grant of a power so monstrous; or look at it in any other light than as a protecting mandate to Congress to interpose with the force and authority of the Union against that violence and usur cannot call for a very rigorous refutation. I have dealt with it accordingly, and have now done with it. We are next invited to study that clause of the constitution which relates to the migration or importation, before the year 1808, of such persons as any of the States then existing should think proper to admit. It runs thus. "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars for each person.' Again, if we are to entertain these hopeful abstractions, and to resolve all establishments into their imaginary elements, in order to recast In a word, the resort to this portion of the them upon some Utopian plan, and if it be true constitution for an argument in favor of the that all the men in a republican Government proposed restriction, is one of those extravamust help to wield its power, and be equal in gances (I hope I shall not offend by this exrights, I beg leave to ask the honorable gentle-pression) which may excite our admiration, but man 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 credit 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 I will not say that the proof of the existence character? I do not address this question to of a power by a clause which, as far as it goes the honorable gentleman's gallantry, but to his denies it, is always inadmissible; but I will say abstraction, and his theories, and his notions of that it is always feeble. On this occasion, it the infinite perfectibility of human institutions, is singularly so. The power, in an affirmative borrowed from Godwin, and the turbulent shape, cannot be found in the constitution; or, philosophers of France. For my own part, sir, if it can, it is equivocal and unsatisfactory. if I may have leave to say so much in the How do the gentlemen supply this deficiency? presence of this mixed, uncommon audience, I By the aid of a negative provision in an article confess I am no friend to female government, of the constitution, in which many restrictions unless, indeed, it be that which reposes on gen- are inserted ex abundanti cautela, from which tleness, and modesty, and virtue, and feminine it is plainly impossible to infer that the power grace and delicacy; and how powerful a gov- to which they apply would otherwise have exernment that is, we have all of us, as I suspect, isted. Thus-"No bill of attainder or ex post at some time or other, experienced. But if the facto law shall be passed." Take away the reultra republican doctrines which have now been striction, could Congress pass a bill of attainder, broached should ever gain ground among us, I the trial by jury in criminal cases being exshould not be surprised if some romantic re- pressly secured by the constitution? The inferformer, treading in the footsteps of Mrs. Wol-ence, therefore, from the prohibition in quesstonecraft, should propose to repeal our republican law salique, and claim for our wives and It is said that this clause empowers Congress, after the year 1808, to prohibit the passage of slaves from State to State, and the word "migration" is relied upon for that purpose. tion, whatever may be its meaning, to the power which it is supposed to restrain, but |