To show that Congress can abolish slavery in the District, under the grant of power “to provide for the common defence and to promote the general welfare,” I quote an extract from a speech of Mr. Madison, of Va., in the first Congress under the constitution, May 13, 1789.  Speaking of the abolition of the slave trade, Mr. Madison says:  “I should venture to say it is as much for the interests of Georgia and South Carolina, as of any state in the union.  Every addition they receive to their number of slaves tends to weaken them, and renders them less capable of self-defence.  In case of hostilities with foreign nations, they will be the means of inviting attack instead of repelling invasion.  It is a necessary duty of the general government to protect every part of the empire against danger, as well internal as external. Every thing, therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may be a local affair, yet if it involves national expense or safety, it becomes of concern to every part of the union, and is a proper subject for the consideration of those charged with the general administration of the government.” Cong.  Reg. vol. 1, p. 310, 11.

WYTHE.

POSTSCRIPT

My apology for adding a postscript, to a discussion already perhaps too protracted, is the fact that the preceding sheets were in the hands of the printer, and all but the concluding pages had gone through the press, before the passage of Mr. Calhoun’s late resolutions in the Senate of the United States.  A proceeding so extraordinary,—­if indeed henceforward any act of Congress in derogation of freedom and in deference to slavery, can be deemed extraordinary,—­should not be passed in silence at such a crisis as the present; especially as the passage of one of the resolutions by a vote of 36 to 9, exhibits a shift of position on the part of the South, as sudden as it is unaccountable, being nothing less than the surrender of a fortress which until then, they had defended with the pertinacity of a blind and almost infuriated fatuity.  Upon the discussions during the pendency of the resolutions, and upon the vote, by which they were carried, I make no comment, save only to record my exultation in the fact there exhibited, that great emergencies are true touchstones, and that henceforward, until this question is settled, whoever holds a seat in Congress will find upon, and around him, a pressure strong enough to test him—­a focal blaze that will find its way through the carefully adjusted cloak of fair pretension, and the sevenfold brass of two faced political intrigue, and no-faced non-committalism, piercing to the dividing asunder of joints and marrow.  Be it known to every northern man who aspires to a seat in our national councils, that hereafter congressional action on this subject will be a MIGHTY REVELATOR—­making secret thoughts public property, and proclaiming on the house-tops what is whispered in the ear—­smiting off masks, and bursting open sepulchres beautiful outwardly, and up-heaving to the sun their dead men’s bones.  To such we say,—­Remember the Missouri Question, and the fate of those who then sold the free states and their own birthright!