saith the Scripture.  I commend Mr. Wise to Paul for his ethics.  Would that he had got his logic of him!  If Congress does not possess the power, why taunt it with its weakness, by asking its exercise?  Why mock it by demanding impossibilities?  Petitioning, according to Mr. Wise, is, in matters of legislation, omnipotence itself; the very source of all constitutional power; for, asking Congress to do what it cannot do, gives it the power—­to pray the exercise of a power that is not, creates it.  A beautiful theory!  Let us work it both ways.  If to petition for the exercise of a power that is not, creates it—­to petition against the exercise of a power that is, annihilates it.  As southern gentlemen are partial to summary processes, pray, sirs, try the virtue of your own recipe on “exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever;” a better subject for experiment and test of the prescription could not be had.  But if the petitions of the citizens of the District give Congress the right to abolish slavery, they impose the duty; if they confer constitutional authority, they create constitutional obligation.  If Congress may abolish because of an expression of their will, it must abolish at the bidding of that will.  If the people of the District are a source of power to Congress, their expressed will has the force of a constitutional provision, and has the same binding power upon the National Legislature.  To make Congress dependent on the District for authority, is to make it a subject of its authority, restraining the exercise of its own discretion, and sinking it into a mere organ of the District’s will.  We proceed to another objection.

“The southern states would not have ratified the constitution, if they had supposed that it gave this power.” It is a sufficient answer to this objection, that the northern states would not have ratified it, if they had supposed that it withheld the power.  If “suppositions” are to take the place of the constitution—­coming from both sides, they neutralize each other.  To argue a constitutional question by guessing at the “suppositions” that might have been made by the parties to it, would find small favor in a court of law.  But even a desperate shift is some easement when sorely pushed.  If this question is to be settled by “suppositions” suppositions shall be forthcoming, and that without stint.

First, then, I affirm that the North ratified the constitution, “supposing” that slavery had begun to wax old, and would speedily vanish away, and especially that the abolition of the slave trade, which by the constitution was to be surrendered to Congress after twenty years, would cast it headlong.

Would the North have adopted the constitution, giving three-fifths of the “slave property” a representation, if it had “supposed” that the slaves would have increased from half a million to two millions and a half by 1838—­and that the census of 1840 would give to the slave states thirty representatives of “slave property?”