y it. I
only say, that _I_ would not now deliberately take it; and that,
having inconsiderately taken it, I can no longer suffer it to lie upon
my soul. I take back the oath, and ask you, sir, to take back the
commission, which was the occasion of my taking it.

I am aware that my course in this matter is liable to be regarded as
singular, if not censurable; and I must, therefore, be allowed to make
a more specific statement of those _provisions of the Constitution_
which support the enormous wrong, the heinous sin of slavery.

The very first Article of the Constitution takes slavery at once under
its legislative protection, as a basis of representation in the
popular branch of the National Legislature. It regards slaves under
the description "of all other _persons_"--as of only three-fifths of
the value of free persons; thus to appearance undervaluing them in
comparison with freemen. But its dark and involved phraseology seems
intended to blind us to the consideration, that those underrated
slaves are merely a _basis_, not the _source_ of representation; that
by the laws of all the States where they live, they are regarded not
as _persons_, but as _things_; that they are not the _constituency_ of
the representative, but his property; and that the necessary effect of
this provision of the Constitution is, to take legislative power out
of the hands of _men_ as such, and give it to the mere possessors of
goods and chattels. Fixing upon thirty thousand persons, as the
smallest number that shall send one member into the House of
Representatives, it protects slavery by distributing legislative power
in a free and in a slave State thus: To a congressional district in
South Carolina, containing fifty thousand slaves, claimed as the
property of five hundred whites, who hold, on an average, one hundred
apiece, it gives one Representative in Congress; to a district in
Massachusetts containing a population of thirty thousand five hundred,
one Representative is assigned. But inasmuch as a slave is never
permitted to vote, the fifty thousand persons in a district in
Carolina form no part of "the constituency;" _that_ is found only in
the five hundred free persons. Five hundred freemen of Carolina could
send one Representative to Congress, while it would take thirty
thousand five hundred freemen of Massachusetts, to do the same thing;
that is, one slaveholder in Carolina is clothed by the Constitution
with the same political power