highest
welfare? The Constitution simply tolerated the existence of slavery, and
no more. As union was impossible without the provision for the rendition
of persons held to labor, escaping from one state into another, it
simply accommodated itself to an evil that was thought would be
restricted, and in due process of time done away with in the slave
States. To strain this provision to mean that it advocated the natural
right of slavery, and recognized the slave as property, to be sold and
bought like other merchandise, is simply to say that the framers of the
Constitution were the greatest hypocrites in the world, originating the
Declaration of Independence upon the basis of the natural right of all
men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and yet with full
knowledge and purpose giving the lie to this instrument in the
Constitution. Madison thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the
idea of property in man. The word 'service' was substituted for
'servitude,' simply because this last encouraged the idea of property.

The constitutional provision for the rendition of slaves was simply a
compromise between union and slavery. Of the two evils of _no union_, or
_no slavery_, it was thought the former was the worse, and consequently
the free States fell in with the measure. But could the patriots of the
Revolution have foreseen the gigantic growth of slavery, and the use
that would have been made of the provision recognizing it, no
consideration would have induced them to adopt a course that has been
prolific of so much misrepresentation and mischief to the country. They
left the suppression of slavery to the States where it existed, but
there was no intention to ingraft the idea of property in man in the
Constitution, or to favor its extension beyond the original slave States
in any way. John Jay, the first Chief-Justice, was preeminently
qualified to judge respecting this. We have his testimony most
explicitly denying the natural right of property in slaves, and
declaring that the Constitution did not recognize the equity of its
extension in the new States or Territories. Who was there more
conversant with the genius of our country than Washington; and yet how
full is his testimony to the evil of slavery; its want of natural right
to support it, and the necessity of its speedy suppression and
abolition? Is it possible that he, himself a slaveholder and an
emancipationist, could utter such sentiments and e