e it_--no model in the records of
ancient history, or in the political theories of Aristotle, with
which it can be likened. Here is one class of men, consisting of not
more than one-fortieth part of the whole people, not more than
one-thirtieth part of the free population, exclusively devoted to
their personal interests identified with their own as slaveholders
of the same associated wealth, and wielding by their votes, upon
every question of government or of public policy, two-fifths of the
whole power of the House. In the Senate of the Union, the proportion
of the slaveholding power is yet greater. Its operation upon the
government of the nation is, to establish an artificial majority in
the slave representation over that of the free people, in the
American Congress, and thereby to make the PRESERVATION, PROPAGATION,
AND PERPETUATION OF SLAVERY THE VITAL AND ANIMATING SPIRIT OF THE
NATIONAL GOVERNMENT.--The result is seen in the fact that, at this
day, the President of the United States, the President of the Senate,
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and five out of nine of
the Judges of the Supreme Judicial Courts of the United States, are
not only citizens of slaveholding States, but individual slaveholders
themselves. So are, and constantly have been, with scarcely an
exception, all the members of both Houses of Congress from the
slaveholding States; and so are, in immensely disproportionate
numbers, the commanding officers of the army and navy; the officers
of the customs; the registers and receivers of the land offices, and
the post-masters throughout the slaveholding States.

Fellow-citizens,--with a body of men thus composed, for legislators
and executors of the laws, what will, what must be, what has been
your legislation? The numbers of freemen constituting your nation
are much greater than those of the slaveholding States, bond and free.
You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union.
Your influence on the legislation and the administration of the
Government ought to be in the proportion of three to two. But how
stands the fact? Besides the legitimate portion of influence
exercised by the slaveholding States by the measure of their numbers,
here is an intrusive influence in every department, by a
representation, nominally of persons, but really of property,
ostensibly of slaves, but effectively of their masters, overbalancing
your superiority of numbers, adding two-fifths of s