the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression—­a conflict in which THE SACRED SIDE IS GAINING DAILY RECRUITS;” when voluntary emancipations on the soil were then progressing at the rate of between one and two thousand annually, (See Judge Tucker’s “Dissertation on Slavery,” p. 73;) when the public sentiment of Virginia had undergone, so mighty a revolution that the idea of the continuance of slavery as a permanent system could not be tolerated, though she then contained about half the slaves in the Union.  Was this the time to stipulate for the perpetuity of slavery under the exclusive legislation of Congress? and that too when at the same session every one of her delegation voted for the abolition of slavery in the North West Territory; a territory which she herself had ceded to the Union, and surrendered along with it her jurisdiction over her citizens, inhabitants of that territory, who held slaves there—­and whose slaves were emancipated by that act of Congress, in which all her delegation with one accord participated?

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—­must we adopt the monstrous conclusion that those states designed to bind Congress never to terminate it?—­that it was the intent of the Ancient Dominion thus to bind the United States by an “implied faith,” and that when the national government accepted the cession, she did solemnly thus plight her troth, and that Virginia did then so understand it?  Verily, honorable senators must suppose themselves deputed to do our thinking for us as well as our legislation, or rather, that they are themselves absolved from such drudgery by virtue of their office!

Another absurdity of this “implied faith” dogma 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.  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 could only bind itself.  It had no authority to bind a subsequent Congress.  Could the members of one Congress say to those 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