would violate this clause.  What does the clause prohibit?  The “taking” of “private property” for “public use.”  Suppose Congress should emancipate the slaves in the District, what would it “take?” Nothing.  What would it hold?  Nothing.  What would it put to “public use?” Nothing.  Instead of taking “private property,” Congress, by abolishing slavery, would say “private property shall not be taken; and those who have been robbed of it already, shall be kept out of it no longer; and every man’s right to his own body shall be protected.”  True, Congress may not arbitrarily take property, as property, from one man and give it to another—­and in the abolition of slavery no such thing is done.  A legislative act changes the condition of the slave—­makes him his own proprietor, instead of the property of another.  It determines a question of original right between two classes of persons—­doing an act of justice to one, and restraining the other from acts of injustice; or, in other words, preventing one from robbing the other, by granting to the injured party the protection of just and equitable laws.

Congress, by an act of abolition, would change the condition of seven thousand “persons” in the District, but would “take” nothing.  To construe this provision so as to enable the citizens of the District to hold as property, and in perpetuity, whatever they please, or to hold it as property in all circumstances—­all necessity, public welfare, and the will and power of the government to the contrary notwithstanding—­is a total perversion of its whole intent.  The design of the provision, was to throw up a barrier against Governmental aggrandizement.  The right to “take property” for State uses is one thing;—­the right so to adjust the tenures by which property is held, that each may have his own secured to him, is another thing, and clearly within the scope of legislation.  Besides, if Congress were to “take” the slaves in the District, it would be adopting, not abolishing slavery—­becoming a slaveholder itself, instead of requiring others to be such no longer.  The clause in question, prohibits the “taking” of individual property for public use, to be employed or disposed of as property for governmental purposes.  Congress, by abolishing slavery in the District, would do no such thing.  It would merely change the condition of that which has been recognized as a qualified property by congressional acts, though previously declared “persons” by the constitution.  More than this is done continually by Congress and every other Legislature.  Property the most absolute and unqualified, is annihilated by legislative acts.  The embargo and non-intercourse act, levelled at a stroke a forest of shipping, and sunk millions of capital.  To say nothing of the power of Congress to take hundreds of millions from the people by direct taxation, who doubts its power to abolish at once the