lieve all this. Nor can we doubt that they "had a design
in the peculiar arrangement" of the clauses adopted by them. That
design, however, we feel quite sure, is different from the one
attributed to them by Mr. Sumner. But let us suppose he is right, and
then see what would follow.

The design attributed to them by Mr. Sumner was to make every one see,
beyond the possibility of a mistake, that the Constitution confers no
power on Congress to pass a Fugitive Slave Law. "They not only decline
all addition of any such power to the compact," says he, "but, _to
render misapprehension impossible,--to make assurance doubly sure,--to
exclude any contrary conclusion_, they punctiliously arrange," etc. Now,
if such were the case, then we ask if design of so easy accomplishment
were ever followed by failure so wonderful?

They failed, in the first place, "to exclude a contrary conclusion" from
the Supreme Courts of Massachusetts, of New York, and of Pennsylvania,
all of which tribunals have decided that they _did_ confer such a power
upon Congress. In the second place, although those wise men labored to
make "misapprehension impossible," yet, according to Mr. Sumner, the
Supreme Court of the United States has entirely misapprehended them. So
far from seeing that the power in question is not granted to Congress,
this high tribunal decides that it is clearly and unquestionably
granted. This is not all. The most marvellous failure is yet to come.
For, after all their pains to make the whole world see their meaning,
these wise men did not see it themselves, but went away, many of them,
and, in the Congress of 1793, helped to pass a Fugitive Slave Law!

It is to be feared, indeed, that the failure would have been absolutely
total but for the wonderful sagacity of a few abolitionists. For the
design imputed to the framers of the Constitution, and which they took
so much pains to disclose, had remained profoundly concealed from nearly
all men, not excepting themselves, until it was detected by Messrs.
Sumner, Chase, and company. But these have, at last, discovered it, and
now see it as in a flood of light. Indeed, they see it with such
transcendent clearness, with such marvellous perspicacity of vision, as
to atone for the stupidity and blindness of the rest of mankind.

So much for Mr. Sumner's historical argument. His logical argument is,
if possible, still more illogical than his historical. In regard to
this, however, we shall be