t_, or even
at the unanimous petition of the people of the District: yet for years
it has been the southern doctrine, that if the people of the District
demand of Congress relief in this respect, it has power, as their local
legislature, to grant it, and by abolishing slavery there, carry out the
will of the citizens. But now new light has broken in! The optics of Mr.
Clay have pierced the millstone with a deeper insight, and discoveries
thicken faster than they can be telegraphed! Congress has no power, O
no, not a modicum! to help the slaveholders of the District, however
loudly they may clamor for it. The southern doctrine, that Congress is
to the District a mere local Legislature to do its pleasure, is tumbled
from the genitive into the vocative! Hard fate--and that too at the
hands of those who begat it! The reasonings of Messrs. Pinckney and
Wise, are now found to be wholly at fault, and the chanticleer rhetoric
of Messrs. Glascock and Garland stalks featherless and crest-fallen. For
the resolution sweeps by the board all those stereotyped common-places,
such as "Congress a local Legislature," "consent of the District,"
"bound to consult the wishes of the District," with other catch phrases,
which for the last two sessions of Congress have served to eke out
scanty supplies. It declares, that as slavery existed in _Maryland and
Virginia at the time of the cession, and as_ it still continues _in both
those states_, it could not be abolished in the District without a
violation of "that good faith," &c.

But let us see where this principle will lead us. If "implied faith" to
Maryland and Virginia _restrains_ Congress from the abolition of slavery
in the District, because those states have not abolished _their_
slavery, it _requires_ Congress to do in the District what those states
have done within their own limits, i.e., restrain _others_ from
abolishing it. Upon the same principle Congress is _bound_ to _prohibit
emancipation_ within the District. There is no _stopping place_ for this
plighted "faith." Congress must not only refrain from laying violent
hands on slavery, and see to it that the slaveholders themselves do not,
but it is bound to keep the system up to the Maryland and Virginia
standard of vigor!

Again, if the good faith of Congress to Virginia and Maryland requires
that slavery should exist in the District, while it exists in those
states, it requires that it should exist there as it exists in those
s