t to have been
expected of judicial tribunals. And whether such were really the
intention of the convention, or the people, is, at least a matter of
conjecture and history, and not of law, nor of any evidence cognizable
by any judicial tribunal.

Why should we search at all for the intentions, either of the
convention, or of the people, beyond the words which both the convention
and the people have agreed upon to express them? What is the object of
written constitutions, and written statutes, and written contracts? Is
it not that the meaning of those who make them may be known with the
most absolute precision of which language is capable? Is it not to get
rid of all the fraud, and uncertainty, and disagreements of oral
testimony? Where would be our constitution, if, instead of its being a
written instrument, it had been merely agreed upon orally by the members
of the convention? And by them only orally reported to the people? And
only this oral report of it had been adopted by the people? And all our
evidence of what it really was, had rested upon reports of what Mr. A,
and Mr. B, members of the convention, had been heard to say? Or upon Mr.
Madison's notes of the debates of the convention? Or upon the oral
reports made by the several members to their respective constituents, or
to the respective state conventions? Or upon flying reports of the
opinions which a few individuals, out of the whole body of the people,
had formed of it when they adopted it? No two of the members of the
convention would probably have agreed in their representations of what
the constitution really was. No two of the people would have agreed in
their understanding of the constitution when they adopted it. And the
consequence would have been that we should really have had no
constitution at all. Yet there is as much ground, both in reason and in
law, for thus throwing aside the _whole_ of the written instrument, and
trusting entirely to these other sources for evidence of what any part
of the constitution really is, as there is for throwing aside those
particular portions of the written instrument, which bear on slavery,
and attempting to supply their place from such evidence as these other
sources may chance to furnish. And yet, to throw aside the written
instrument, so far as its provisions are prohibitory of slavery, and
make a new constitution on that point, out of other testimony, is the
only means, confessedly the only means, by which slav