Finally, in the clause under consideration “private property” is not to be taken “without just compensation.”  “JUST!” If justice is to be appealed to in determining the amount of compensation, let her determine the grounds also.  If it be her province to say how much compensation is “just,” it is hers to say whether any is “just,”—­whether the slave is “just” property at all, rather than a “person”.  Then, if justice adjudges the slave to be “private property,” it adjudges him to be his own property, since the right to one’s self is the first right—­the source of all others—­the original stock by which they are accumulated—­the principal, of which they are the interest.  And since the slave’s “private property” has been “taken,” and since “compensation” is impossible—­there being no equivalent for one’s self—­the least that can be done is to restore to him his original private property.

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 estate—­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 in 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?