If Congress cannot constitutionally impair the right of private property, or take it without compensation, it cannot constitutionally, legalise the perpetration of such acts, by others, nor protect those who commit them.  Does the power to rob a man of his earnings, rob the earner of his right to them?  Who has a better right to the product than the producer?—­to the interest, than the owner of the principal?—­to the hands and arms, than he from whose shoulders they swing?—­to the body and soul, than he whose they are?  Congress not only impairs but annihilates the right of private property, while it withholds from the slaves of the District their title to themselves.  What!  Congress powerless to protect a man’s right to himself, when it can make inviolable the right to a dog!  But, waving this, I deny that the abolition of slavery in the District would violate this clause.  What does the clause prohibit?  The “taking” of “private property” for “public use.”  Suppose Congress should emancipate the slaves in the District, what would it “take?” Nothing.  What would it hold?  Nothing.  What would it put to “public use?” Nothing.  Instead of taking “private property,” Congress, by abolishing slavery, would say “private property shall not be taken; and those who have been robbed of it already, shall be kept out of it no longer; and since every man’s right to his own body is paramount, he shall be protected in it.”  True, Congress may not arbitrarily take property, as property, from one man and give it to another—­and in the abolition of slavery no such thing is done.  A legislative act changes the condition of the slave—­makes him his own proprietor instead of the property of another.  It determines a question of original right between two classes of persons—­doing an act of justice to one, and restraining the other from acts of injustice; or, in other words, preventing one from robbing the other, by granting to the injured party the protection of just and equitable laws.

Congress, by an act of abolition, would change the condition of seven thousand “persons” in the District, but would “take” nothing.  To construe this provision so as to enable the citizens of the District to hold as property, and in perpetuity, whatever they please, or to hold it as property in all circumstances—­all necessity, public welfare, and the will and power of the government to the contrary notwithstanding—­is a total perversion of its whole intent.  The design of the provision, was to throw up a barrier against Governmental aggrandizement.  The right to “take property” for State uses is one thing;—­the right so to adjust the tenures by which property is held, that each may have his own secured to him, is another thing, and clearly within the scope of legislation.  Besides, if Congress were to