Now in view of the universal belief then prevalent, that slavery in this country was doomed to short life, and especially that in Maryland and Virginia it would be speedily abolished—­are we to be told that those states designed to bind Congress never to terminate it?  Are we to adopt the monstrous conclusion that this was the intent of the Ancient Dominion—­thus to bind the United States by an “implied faith,” and that when the United States accepted the cession, she did solemnly thus plight her troth, and that Virginia did then so understand it?  Verily one would think that honorable senators supposed themselves deputed to do our thinking as well as our legislation, or rather, that they themselves were absolved from such drudgery by virtue of their office!

Another absurdity of this dogma about “implied faith” is, that where there was no power to exact an express pledge, there was none to demand an implied one, and where there was no power to give the one, there was none to give the other.  We have shown already that Congress could not have accepted the cession with such a condition.  To have signed away a part of its constitutional grant of power would have been a breach of the Constitution.  Further, the Congress which accepted the cession was competent to pass a resolution pledging itself not to use all the power over the District committed to it by the Constitution.  But here its power ended.  Its resolution would only bind itself.  Could it bind the next Congress by its authority?  Could the members of one Congress say to the members of another, because we do not choose to exercise all the authority vested in us by the Constitution, therefore you shall not?  This would have been a prohibition to do what the Constitution gives power to do.  Each successive Congress would still have gone to the Constitution for its power, brushing away in its course the cobwebs stretched across its path by the officiousness of an impertinent predecessor.  Again, the legislatures of Virginia and Maryland, had no power to bind Congress, either by an express or an implied pledge, never to abolish slavery in the District.  Those legislatures had no power to bind themselves never to abolish slavery within their own territories—­the ceded parts included.  Where then would they get power to bind another not to do what they had no power to bind themselves not to do?  If a legislature could not in this respect control the successive legislatures of its own State, could it control the successive Congresses of the United States?