ut States. Certainly the people of a State
are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but
why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why
are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped
together, and their relation to the Constitution therefore treated as
being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice
Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the
concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United
States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude
slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether
or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to
exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure,
if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of
unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their
limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf
of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska Bill,--I ask, who can be
quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it
had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the
power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it
more than once, Using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of
the Nebraska Act. On one occasion, his exact language is, "Except in cases
where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States,
the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its
jurisdiction." In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by
the United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the
same question, as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, was
left open in the Nebraska Act. Put this and that together, and we have
another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another
Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United
States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And
this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind
sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when
made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all
the States. Welcome or unwelc