pressive policy of 300,000 owners of
slaves.

From the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United
States, the institution of domestic slavery has been becoming more and
more the abhorrence of the civilized world. But in proportion as it
has been growing odious to all the rest of mankind, it has been
sinking deeper and deeper into the affections of the holders of
slaves themselves. The cultivation of cotton and of sugar, unknown in
the Union at the establishment of the Constitution, has added largely
to the pecuniary value of the slave. And the suppression of the
African slave-trade as piracy upon pain of death, by securing the
benefit of a monopoly to the virtuous slaveholders of the ancient
dominion, has turned her heroic tyrannicides into a community of
slave-breeders for sale, and converted the land of George Washington,
Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson, into a great
barracoon--a cattle-show of human beings, an emporium, of which the
staple articles of merchandise are the flesh and blood, the bones and
sinews of immortal man.

Of the increasing abomination of slavery in the unbought hearts of men
at the time when the Constitution of the United States was formed,
what clearer proof could be desired, than that the very same year in
which that charter of the land was issued, the Congress of the
Confederation, with not a tithe of the powers given by the people to
the Congress of the new compact, actually abolished slavery for ever
throughout the whole Northwestern territory, without a remonstrance or
a murmur. But in the articles of confederation, there was no guaranty
for the property of the slaveholder--no double representation of him
in the Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation for the
recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of _government_ came
to be delegated to the Union, the--that is, South Carolina and
Georgia--refused their subscription to the parchment, till it should
be saturated with the infection of slavery, which no fumigation could
purify, no quarantine could extinguish. The freemen of the North gave
way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the Constitution
of freedom. Its first consequence has been to invert the first
principle of Democracy, that the will of the majority of numbers shall
rule the land. By means of the double representation, the minority
command the whole, and a KNOT OF SLAVEHOLDERS GIVE THE LAW AND
PRESCRIBE THE P