r_ to Congress, their
_expressed_ will has the force of a constitutional provision, and has
the same binding power upon the National Legislature. To make Congress
dependent on the District for authority, is to make it a _subject_ of
its authority, restraining the exercise of its own discretion, and
sinking it into a mere organ of the District's will. We proceed to
another objection.

"_The southern states would not have ratified the constitution, if they
had supposed that it gave this power._" It is a sufficient answer to
this objection, that the northern states would not have ratified it, if
they had supposed that it _withheld_ the power. If "suppositions" are to
take the place of the constitution--coming from both sides, they
neutralize each other. To argue a constitutional question by _guessing_
at the "suppositions" that might have been made by the parties to it,
would find small favor in a court of law. But even a desperate shift is
some easement when sorely pushed. If this question is to be settled by
"suppositions" suppositions shall be forthcoming, and that without
stint.

First, then, I affirm that the North ratified the constitution,
"supposing" that slavery had begun to wax old, and would speedily vanish
away, and especially that the abolition of the slave trade, which by the
constitution was to be surrendered to Congress after twenty years, would
cast it headlong.

Would the North have adopted the constitution, giving three-fifths of
the "slave property" a representation, if it had "supposed" that the
slaves would have increased from half a million to two millions and a
half by 1838--and that the census of 1840 would give to the slave states
thirty representatives of "slave property?"

If they had "supposed" that this representation would have controlled
the legislation of the government, and carried against the North every
question vital to its interests, would Hamilton, Franklin, Sherman,
Gerry, Livingston, Langdon, and Rufus King have been such madmen, as to
sign the constitution, and the Northern States such suicides as to
ratify it? Every self-preserving instinct would have shrieked at such an
infatuate immolation. At the adoption of the United States constitution,
slavery was regarded as a fast waning system. This conviction was
universal. Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Grayson, Tucker, Madison,
Wythe, Pendleton, Lee, Blair, Mason, Page, Parker, Randolph, Iredell,
Spaight, Ramsey, Pinkney, Martin,