d should change--with the progress of society. The
Constitution of the United States provides for its own amendment by the
people by whom and for whom it was framed. Many amendments have already
been made; more are likely in time to be found needful. And no one but a
fool will swear blindly by 'the Constitution as it is,' if he is thereby
to be precluded from voting for such improvements as time and
circumstances may make important and desirable.

But these traitorous traders in the phrase have (as before said) but one
single point in view. In the whole compass of the Constitution their
devotion embraces nothing in their vows for its unchangeable sacredness
except its recognition of slavery, its provisions for the rendition of
fugitive slaves, and for counting five Southern chattels as three white
citizens in the basis for Federal representation. These are provisions
that must not be changed. This is what they mean, and all they mean,
when they shout for 'the Constitution as it is.' So sacred is the
Constitution in this one sole respect, that they have rung every change
of protest--from solemn remonstrance to frantic howls of wrath--against
the recent law for taking from rebels the slaves that dig trenches and
grow food for them while they are fighting for the overthrow of the
Constitution. And the only vision of a Constitution '_as it is_' which
looms up to their views and wishes in the future--'the Mecca of their
hearts' fond dream'--is the overthrow of this legislation, and the
reinstatement of slaveholders in their old rights fortified and extended
by Supreme Court decisions carrying slavery and their slave laws into
all the Territories, with the right of transit and sale for slaves in
all the free States.

But most wise men believe that in the end of the war there is not likely
to be much slavery to need constitutional protection. And since our
nation at its very birth solemnly proclaimed the doctrine that of right
'all men are born free and equal' as before the law, and have an equal
right 'to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' perhaps these
Democrats may be willing to let these provisions in behalf of slavery be
dropped out of the Constitution when they shall have become no longer
any thing but a dead letter--with no power of political victory and
reward in them. As a living contradiction to the Declaration of
Independence they have been the source of all our woes. It is not
necessary to blame the fra