With sentiments of high esteem, &c,

    W. W. ELLSWORTH.”

* * * * *

APPENDIX B.

A short time previous to the late election in Rhode Island for governor and lieutenant-governor, a letter was addressed to each of the candidates for those offices by Mr. Johnson, Corresponding Secretary of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, embodying the views of the abolitionists on the several subjects it embraced, in a series of queries.  Their purport will appear from the answer of Mr. Sprague, (who was elected governor,) given below.  The answer of Mr. Childs (elected lieutenant-governor) is fully as direct as that of governor Sprague.

    “WARWICK, March 28, 1838.

DEAR SIR,—­Your favor of the 19th inst. requesting of me, in conformity to a resolution of the Executive Committee of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, an expression of my opinions on certain topics, was duly received.  I have no motive whatever for withholding my opinions on any subject which is interesting to any portion of my fellow-citizens.  I will, therefore, cheerfully proceed to reply to the interrogatories proposed, and in the order in which they are submitted.

1.  Among the powers vested by the Constitution in Congress, is the power to exercise exclusive legislation, ‘in all cases whatsoever,’ over the District of Columbia?  ‘All cases’ must, of course, include the case of slavery and the slave-trade.  I am, therefore, clearly of opinion, that the Constitution does confer upon Congress the power to abolish slavery and the slave-trade in that District; and, as they are great moral and political evils, the principles of justice and humanity demand the exercise of that power.

2.  The traffic in slaves, whether foreign or domestic, is equally obnoxious to every principle of justice and humanity; and, as Congress has exercised its powers to suppress the slave-trade between this country and foreign nations, it ought, as a matter of consistency and justice, to exercise the same powers to suppress the slave-trade between the states of this Union.  The slave-trade within the states is, undoubtedly, beyond the control of Congress; as the ’sovereignty of each state, to legislate exclusively on the subject of slavery, which is tolerated within its limits,’ is, I believe, universally conceded.  The Constitution unquestionably recognises the sovereign power of each state to legislate on the subject within its limits; but it imposes on us no obligation to add to the evils of the system by countenancing the traffic between the states.  That which our laws have solemnly pronounced to be piracy in our foreign intercourse, no sophistry can make honorable or justifiable in a domestic form.  For a proof of the feelings which this traffic naturally inspires, we need but refer to the universal execration