property in man; and that wherever that law is not counteracted on this point by positive law, “slaves cannot breathe,” and their “shackles fall.”  I scarcely need add, that the Federal Constitution does, in the main, accord with the common law.  In the words of a very able writer:  “The common law is the grand element of the United States Constitution.  All its fundamental provisions are instinct with its spirit; and its existence, principles, and paramount authority, are presupposed and assumed throughout the whole.”

To argue the anti-slavery character of the Federal Constitution, it is not necessary to take the high ground of some, that whatever in the Constitution favors slavery is void, because opposed to the principles and general tenor of that instrument.  Much less is it necessary to take the still higher ground, that every law in favor of slavery, in whatever code or connection it may be found, is utterly invalid because of its plain contravention of the law of nature.  To maintain my position, that the Constitution is anti-slavery in its general character, and that constitutional slavery is, at the most, but an exception to that general character, it was not necessary to take either of these grounds; though, had I been disposed to take even the higher of them, I should not have lacked the countenance of the most weighty authorities.  “The law of nature,” says Blackstone, “being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other.  It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times:  no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.”  The same writer says, that “The law of nature requires, that man should pursue his own true and substantial happiness.”  But that slavery allows this pursuit to its victims, no one will pretend.  “There is a law,” says Henry Brougham, “above all the enactments of human codes.  It is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty phantasy, that man can hold property in man.”

I add no more to what I have said on the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia, than to ask, as I have done in relation to the inter-state slave trade and the annexation of slave states, whether petitions for its abolition argue so great a contempt of the Constitution, and so entire a recklessness of propriety, as to merit the treatment which they receive at the hands of Congress.  Admitting that Congress has not the constitutional power to abolish slavery in the District—­admitting that it has not the constitutional power to destroy what itself has established—­admitting, too, that if it has the power, it ought not to exercise it;—­nevertheless, is the case so perfectly clear, that the petitioners for the measure deserve all the abuse and odium which their representatives in Congress heap upon them?