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 and influence in the Representatives
Hall at Washington, as sixty Massachusetts men like you and me, who
"eat their bread in the sweat of their own brows."

According to the census of 1830, and the _ratio_ of representation
based upon that, slave property added twenty-five members to the House
of Representatives. And as it has been estimated, (as an
approximation to the truth,) that the two and a half million slaves in
the United States are held as property by about two hundred and fifty
thousand persons--giving an average of ten slaves to each slaveholder,
those twenty-five Representatives, each chosen, at most by only ten
thousand voters, and probably by less than three-fourths of that
number, were the representatives not only of the two hundred and fifty
thousand persons who chose them, but of property which, five years
ago, when slaves were lower in market, than at present, were
estimated, by the man who is now the most prominent candidate for the
Presidency, at twelve hundred millions of dollars--a sum, which, by
the natural increase of five years, and the enhanced value resulting
from a more prosperous state of the planting interest, cannot now be
less than fifteen hundred millions of dollars. All this vast amount of
property, as it is "peculiar," is also identical in its character. In
Congress, as we have seen, it is animated by one spirit, moves in one
mass, and is wielded with one aim; and when we consider that tyranny
is always timid, and despotism distrustful, we see that this vast
money power would be false to itself, did it not direct all its eyes
and hands, and put forth all its ingenu