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” deigns to puff breath into its nostrils?  Besides, if the consent of the people of the District be necessary, the consent of the whole people must be had—­not that of a majority, however large.  Majorities, to be authoritative, must be legal—­and a legal majority without legislative power, or right of representation, or even the electoral franchise, would be truly an anomaly!  In the District of Columbia, such a thing as a majority in a legal sense is unknown to law.  To talk of the power of a majority, or the will of a majority there, is mere mouthing.  A majority?  Then it has an authoritative will, and an organ to make it known, and an executive to carry it into effect—­Where are they?  We repeat it—­if the consent of the people of the District be necessary, the consent of every one is necessary—­and universal consent will come only with the Greek Kalends and a “perpetual motion.”  A single individual might thus perpetuate slavery in defiance of the expressed will of a whole people.  The most common form of this fallacy is given by Mr. Wise, of Virginia, in his speech, February 16, 1835, in which he denied the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, unless the inhabitants owning slaves petitioned for it!!  Southern members of Congress at the present session (1837-8) ring changes almost daily upon the same fallacy.  What! pray Congress to use a power which it has not?  “It is required of a man according to what he hath,” saith the Scripture.  I commend Mr. Wise to Paul for his ethics.  Would that he had got his logic of him!  If Congress does not possess the power, why taunt it with its weakness, by asking its exercise?  Petitioning, according to Mr. Wise, is, in matters of legislation, omnipotence itself; the very source of all constitutional power; for, asking Congress to do what it cannot do, gives it the power!—­to pray the exercise of a power that is not, creates it!  A beautiful theory!  Let us work it both ways.  If to petition for the exercise of a power that is not, creates it—­to petition against the exercise of a power that is, annihilates it.  As southern gentlemen are partial to summary processes, pray, sirs, try the virtue of your own recipe on “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever;” a better subject for experiment and test of the prescription could not be had.  But if the petitions of the citizens of the District give Congress the right to abolish slavery, they impose the duty; if they confer constitutional authority, they create constitutional obligation.  If Congress may abolish because of an expression of their will, it must abolish at the bidding of that will.  If the people of the District are a source of power 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.