.

Still further: there are constitutional relations between the slave
and free States which are degrading to the latter. We are under legal
obligations to catch and return their runaway slaves to them: a sort
of dirty, disagreeable job, which, I believe, as a general rule, the
slaveholders will not perform for one another. Then again, in the control
of the government--the management of the partnership affairs--they have
greatly the advantage of us. By the Constitution each State has two
senators, each has a number of representatives in proportion to the number
of its people, and each has a number of Presidential electors equal to
the whole number of its senators and representatives together. But in
ascertaining the number of the people for this purpose, five slaves are
counted as being equal to three whites. The slaves do not vote; they are
only counted and so used as to swell the influence of the white people's
votes. The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a comparison
of the States of South Carolina and Maine. South Carolina has six
representatives, and so has Maine; South Carolina has eight Presidential
electors, and so has Maine. This is precise equality so far; and of course
they are equal in senators, each having two. Thus in the control of the
government the two States are equals precisely. But how are they in the
number of their white people? Maine has 581,813, while South Carolina has
274,567; Maine has twice as many as South Carolina, and 32,679 over. Thus,
each white man in South Carolina is more than the double of any man in
Maine. This is all because South Carolina, besides her free people, has
384,984 slaves. The South Carolinian has precisely the same advantage over
the white man in every other free State as well as in Maine. He is more
than the double of any one of us in this crowd. The same advantage, but
not to the same extent, is held by all the citizens of the slave States
over those of the free; and it is an absolute truth, without an exception,
that there is no voter in any slave State but who has more legal power in
the government than any voter in any free State. There is no instance
of exact equality; and the disadvantage is against us the whole chapter
through. This principle, in the aggregate, gives the slave States in the
present Congress twenty additional representatives, being seven more than
the whole majority by which they passed the Nebraska Bill.

Now all this is manifestl