with the United States constitution, is totally irrelevant to the question at issue.  What saith the CONSTITUTION?  That is the question.  Not, what saith Virginia, or Maryland, or—­equally to the point—­John Bull!  If Maryland and Virginia had been the authorized interpreters of the constitution for the Union, these acts of cession could hardly have been magnified more than they were by Messrs. Garland and Wise in the last Congress.  A true understanding of the constitution can be had, forsooth, only by holding it up in the light of Maryland and Virginia legislation!

We are told, again, that those States would not have ceded the District if they had supposed the constitution gave Congress power to abolish slavery in it.

This comes with an ill grace from Maryland and Virginia.  They knew the constitution.  They were parties to it.  They had sifted it, clause by clause, in their State conventions.  They had weighed its words in the balance—­they had tested them as by fire; and finally, after long pondering, they adopted the constitution.  And afterward, self-moved, they ceded the ten miles square, and declared the cession made “in pursuance of” that oft-cited clause, “Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legalisation in all cases whatsoever over such District,” &c.  And now verily “they would not have ceded if they had supposed!” &c.  Cede it they did, and “in full and absolute right both of soil and persons.”  Congress accepted the cession—­state power over the District ceased, and congressional power over it commenced—­and now, the sole question to be settled is, the amount of power over the District, lodged in Congress by the constitution.  The constitution—­the CONSTITUTION—­that is the point.  Maryland and Virginia “suppositions” must be potent suppositions, to abrogate a clause in the United States Constitution!  That clause either gives Congress power to abolish slavery in the District, or it does not—­and that point is to be settled, not by state “suppositions,” nor state usages, nor state legislation, but by the terms of the clause themselves.

Southern members of Congress, in the recent discussions, have conceded the power of a contingent abolition in the District, by suspending it upon the consent of the people.  Such a doctrine from declaimers like Messrs. Alford, of Georgia, and Walker, of Mississippi, would excite no surprise; but that it should be honored with the endorsement of such men as Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun, is quite unaccountable.  Are attributes of sovereignty mere creatures of contingency?  Is delegated authority mere conditional permission?  Is a constitutional power to be exercised by those who hold it, only by popular sufferance?  Must it lie helpless at the pool of public sentiment, waiting the gracious troubling of its waters?  Is it a lifeless corpse, save only when popular “consent”