e as plaintiffs: [This
last was also the law of Virginia in 1795. See Tucker's "Dissertation on
Slavery," p. 73.] There were also laws making marriage contracts legal,
in certain contingencies, and punishing infringements of them,
["_Reeve's Law of Baron and Femme_," p. 310-1.] Each of the laws
enumerated above, does, _in principle_, abolish slavery; and all of them
together abolish it _in fact_. True, not as a _whole_, and at a
_stroke_, nor all in one place; but in its _parts_, by piecemeal, at
divers times and places; thus showing that the abolition of slavery is
within the boundary of _legislation_.

5._The competency of the law-making power to abolish slavery has been
recognized by all the slaveholding States, either directly or by
implication_. Some States recognize it in their _Constitutions_, by
giving the legislature power to emancipate such slaves as may "have
rendered the state some distinguished service," and others by express
prohibitory restrictions. The Constitutions of Mississippi, Arkansas,
and other States, restrict the power of the legislature in this respect.
Why this express prohibition, if the law-making power cannot abolish
slavery? A stately farce, indeed, formally to construct a special
clause, and with appropriate rites induct it into the Constitution, for
the express purpose of restricting a nonentity!--to take from the
lawmaking power what it _never had_, and what _cannot_ pertain to it!
The legislatures of those States have no power to abolish slavery,
simply because their Constitutions have expressly _taken away_ that
power. The people of Arkansas, Mississippi, &c., well knew the
competency of the law-making power to abolish slavery, and hence their
zeal to _restrict_ it. The fact that these and other States have
inhibited their legislatures from the exercise of this power, shows that
the abolition of slavery is acknowledged to be a proper subject of
legislation, when Constitutions impose no restrictions.

The slaveholding States have recognised this power in their _laws_. The
Virginia Legislature passed a law in 1786 to prevent the further
importation of Slaves, of which the following is an extract: "And be it
further enacted that every slave imported into this commonwealth
contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act, shall upon such
importation become _free_." By a law of Virginia, passed Dec. 17, 1792,
a slave brought into the state and kept _there a year_, was _free_. The
Mary