Having shown that in abolishing slavery, “property” would not be “taken for public use,” it may be added that, in those states where slavery has been abolished by law, no claim for compensation has been allowed.  Indeed the manifest absurdity of demanding it, seems to have quite forestalled the setting up of such a claim.

The abolition of slavery in the District, instead of being a legislative anomaly, would proceed upon the principles of every day legislation.  It has been shown already, that the United States’ Constitution does not recognize slaves as “property.”  Yet ordinary legislation is full of precedents, showing that even absolute property is in many respects wholly subject to legislation.  The repeal of the law of entailments—­all those acts that control the alienation of property, its disposal by will, its passing to heirs by descent, with the question, who shall be heirs, and what shall be the rule of distribution among them, or whether property shall be transmitted at all by descent, rather than escheat to the state—­these, with statutes of limitation, and various other classes of legislative acts, serve to illustrate the acknowledged scope of the law-making power, even where property is in every sense absolute.  Persons whose property is thus affected by public laws, receive from the government no compensation for their losses, unless the state has been put into possession of the property taken from them.

The preamble of the United States’ Constitution declares it to be a fundamental object of the organization of the government “to ESTABLISH JUSTICE.”  Has Congress no power to do that for which it was made the depository of power?  CANNOT the United States Government fulfil the purpose for which it was brought into being?

To abolish slavery, is to take from no rightful owner his property; but to “establish justice” between two parties.  To emancipate the slave, is to “establish justice” between him and his master—­to throw around the person, character, conscience, liberty, and domestic relations of the one, the same law that secures and blesses the other.  In other words, to prevent by legal restraints one class of men from seizing upon another class, and robbing them at pleasure of their earnings, their time, their liberty, their kindred, and the very use and ownership of their own persons.  Finally, to abolish slavery is to proclaim and enact that innocence and helplessness—­now free plunder—­are entitled to legal protection; and that power, avarice, and lust, shall no longer gorge upon their spoils under the license, and by the ministrations of law!  Congress, by possessing “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever,” has a general protective power for ALL the inhabitants of the District.  If it has no power to protect one man, it has none to protect another—­none to protect any—­and