ss proceeded, as he maintains, to _usurp_ and exercise that power!

This is not all. Every member from the free States, with the exception
of five, recorded his vote in favor of the same law.[216] In the Senate,
as we have already said, it was passed by resolution, and not by a
recorded vote. No one, in either branch of Congress, uttered a syllable
against the constitutionality of the law, though many of the most
distinguished members of the very convention which framed the
Constitution itself were there. Not to mention others, there were James
Madison, and Roger Sherman, and Elbridge Gerry, and Rufus King, and
Caleb Strong, and Robert Morris, and Oliver Elsworth; and yet from not
one of these illustrious framers of the Constitution was a syllable
uttered against the constitutionality of the law in question. Nay, the
law was supported and enacted by themselves. What, then, in the face of
these indubitable facts, becomes of all Mr. Sumner's far-fetched
arguments from "the literature of the age" and from his multitudinous
voices against slavery? It is absurd, says Mr. Sumner, to suppose that
such men intended to confer any power upon Congress to pass a Fugitive
Slave Law. It is a _fact_, we reply, that as members of Congress they
proceeded, without hesitation or doubt, to exercise that very power. It
"dishonors the memory of the fathers," says Mr. Sumner, to suppose they
intended that Congress should possess such a power. How, then, will he
vindicate the memory of the fathers against the imputation of his own
doctrine that they, as members of Congress, must have knowingly usurped
the power which, as members of the convention, they had intended not to
confer?

One more of Mr. Sumner's historical arguments, and we are done with this
branch of the subject. He deems it the most conclusive of all. It is
founded on the arrangement of certain clauses of the Constitution, and
is, we believe, perfectly original. We must refer the reader to the
speech itself if he desire to see this very curious argument, since we
cannot spare the room to give it a full and fair statement.

Nor is this at all necessary to our purpose, inasmuch as we intend to
notice only one thing about this argument, namely, the wonderful effect
it produces on the mind of its inventor. "The framers of the
Constitution," says he, "were wise and careful men, who had a reason for
what they did, and who understood the language which they employed." We
can readily be