It should be regarded as no inconsiderable evidence of the anti-slavery genius and policy of the Constitution, that Congress promptly interdicted slavery in the first portion of territory, and that, too, a territory of vast extent, over which it acquired jurisdiction.  And is it not a perfectly reasonable supposition, that the seat of our Government would not have been polluted by the presence of slavery, had Congress acted on that subject by itself, instead of losing sight of it in the wholesale legislation, by which the laws of Virginia and Maryland were revived in the District?

If the Federal Constitution be not anti-slavery in its general scope and character; if it be not impregnated with the principles of universal liberty; why was it necessary, in order to restrain Congress, for a limited period, from acting against the slave trade, which is but a branch or incident of slavery, to have a clause to that end in the Constitution?  The fact that the framers of the Constitution refused to blot its pages with the word “slave” or “slavery;” and that, by periphrase and the substitution of “persons” for “slaves,” they sought to conceal from posterity and the world the mortifying fact, that slavery existed under a government based on the principle, that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” contains volumes of proof, that they looked upon American slavery as a decaying institution; and that they would naturally shape the Constitution to the abridgment and the extinction, rather than the extension and perpetuity of the giant vice of the country.

It is not to be denied, that the Constitution tolerates a limited measure of slavery:  but it tolerates this measure only as the exception to its rule of impartial and universal liberty.  Were it otherwise, the principles of that instrument could be pleaded to justify the holding of men as property, in cases, other than those specifically provided for in it.  Were it otherwise, these principles might be appealed to, as well to sanction the enslavement of men, as the capture of wild beasts.  Were it otherwise, the American people might be Constitutionally realizing the prophet’s declaration:  “they all lie in wait for blood:  they hunt every man his brother with a net.”  But mere principles, whether in or out of the Constitution, do not avail to justify and uphold slavery.  Says Lord Mansfield in the famous Somerset case:  “The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being now introduced by courts of justice upon mere reasoning or inferences from any principles, natural or political; it must take its rise from positive law; the origin of it can in no country or age be traced back to any other source.  A case so odious as the condition of slaves, must be taken strictly.”  Grotius says, that “slavery places man in an unnatural relation to man—­a relation which nothing but positive law can sustain.”  All are aware, that, by the common law, man cannot have