surrendered to Congress after twenty years, would
cast it headlong.

Would the North have adopted the constitution, giving three-fifths of
the "slave property" a representation, if it has "supposed" that the
slaves would have increased from half a million to two millions and a
half by 1838--and that the census of 1840 would give to the slave
states, 30 representatives of "slave property?"

If they had "supposed" that this representation would have controlled
the legislation of the government, and carried against the North every
question vital to its interests, would Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin
Franklin, Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, William Livingston, John
Langdon, and Rufus King have been such madmen, as to sign the
constitution, and the Northern States such suicides as to ratify it?
Every self-preserving instinct would have shrieked at such an infatuate
immolation. At the adoption of the United States constitution, slavery
was regarded as a fast waning system. This conviction was universal.
Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Grayson, St. George Tucker,
Madison, Wythe, Pendleton, Lee, Blair, Mason, Page, Parker, Edmund
Randolph, Iredell, Spaight, Ramsey, William Pinckney, Luther Martin,
James McHenry, Samuel Chase, and nearly all the illustrious names south
of the Potomac, proclaimed it before the sun, that the days of slavery
were beginning to be numbered. A reason urged in the convention that
formed the United States constitution, why the word slave should not be
used in it, was, that _when slavery should cease_ there might remain
upon the National Charter no record that it had even been. (See speech
of Mr. Burrill, of R.I., on the Missouri question.)

I now proceed to show by testimony, that at the date of the United
States constitution, and for several years before and after that period,
slavery was rapidly on the wane; that the American Revolution with the
great events preceding accompanying, and following it, had wrought an
immense and almost universal change in the public sentiment of the
nation of the subject, powerfully impelling it toward the entire
abolition of the system--and that it was the _general belief_ that
measures for its abolition throughout the Union, would be commenced by
the individual States generally before the lapse of many years. A great
mass of testimony establishing this position is at hand and might be
presented, but narrow space, little time, the patience of readers, and
the im