e interest of the slave power for the
passage of laws protecting slavery within their limits. No means,
however impure, would be omitted to obtain them; and it is easy to see
that a slave code upon the subject of transit of fugitives, more or
less stringent in its character, would soon find its way into every
statute book. When the States now free abolished slavery within their
own limits, they intended to get rid of the evil entirely, not only in
practice but as a necessity of legislation; these provisions compel a
return to it, and involve the adoption of new laws for its regulation
or exclusion.

_Seventh._ [Transcriber's Note: should be "Sixth"]--The sixth section
makes most of the amendments which give a constitutional protection to
slavery, unalterable without the consent of all the States. It also
includes the second section of the fourth article, which provides that
"representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States according to their respective members," including
three-fifths of all slaves, &c.; and that portion of the fourth
article which requires the delivering up of fugitive slaves. Thus, a
preference is given to the slave interest over every other; these may
all be affected by a constitutional amendment, ratified or adopted by
three-fourths of the States; but the slave clauses are to remain,
except by universal consent, fixed and immovable. No such protection
is given to freedom; none to the property of free men, unless it be
what is called property in slaves; none to the freedom of the press;
none to the religion of the citizen, or to the rights of conscience.
These rights, more sacred than any other, are deemed of less
importance, and are secured by less guarantees than the right to hold
a fellow man in bondage and to traffic in his flesh. Moreover, the
three-fifth representation of slaves, and only the same rate of direct
taxation, are perpetual by the same rigid provision. This not only
gives to the slave States a representation of three-fifths of their
slave property, but it secures to them an exemption from taxation on
the same property to the extent of two-fifths. But no property
whatever, in the free States constitutes a basis of representation,
and all of it is liable to, and may be taxed. Unequal and unjust as
was this discrimination in favor of the slave States, still as it
formed a part of the original Constitution, it should be maintained;
but when it is sought to