so far as it is applicable to our present state, and subject to the modifications it has received here in the course of nearly half a century.”  Chief Justice Taylor of North Carolina, in his decision in the case of the State vs. Reed, in 1823, Hawkes’ N.C.  Reps. 454, says, “a law of paramount, obligation to the statute, was violated by the offence—­COMMON LAW, founded upon the law of nature, and confirmed by revelation.”  The legislation of the United States abounds in recognitions of the principles of the common law, asserting their paramount binding power.  Sparing details, of which our national state papers are full, we illustrate by a single instance.  It was made a condition of the admission of Louisiana into the Union, that the right of trial by jury should be secured to all her citizens,—­the United States government thus employing its power to enlarge the jurisdiction of the common law in this its great representative.

Having shown that the abolition of slavery is within the competency of the law-making power, when unrestricted by constitutional provisions, and that the legislation of Congress over the District is thus unrestricted, its power to abolish slavery there is established.  We argue it further, from the fact that,

10.  SLAVERY NOW EXISTS IN THE DISTRICT BY AN ACT OF CONGRESS.  In the act of 16th July, 1790, Congress accepted portions of territory offered by the states of Maryland and Virginia, and enacted that the laws, as they then were, should continue in force, “until Congress shall otherwise by law provide.”  Under these laws, adopted by Congress, and in effect re-enacted and made laws of the District, the slaves there are now held.

Is Congress so impotent in its own “exclusive jurisdiction” that it cannot “otherwise by law provide?” If it can say, what shall be considered property, it can say what shall not be considered property.  Suppose a legislature should enact that marriage contracts should be mere bills of sale, making a husband the proprietor of his wife, as his bona fide property; and suppose husbands should herd their wives in droves for the market as beasts of burden, or for the brothel as victims of lust, and then prate about their inviolable legal property, and deny the power of the legislature, which stamped them “property,” to undo its own wrong, and secure to wives by law the rights of human beings.  Would such cant about “legal rights” be heeded where reason and justice held sway, and where law, based upon fundamental morality, received homage?  If a frantic legislature pronounces woman a chattel, has it no power, with returning reason, to take back the blasphemy?  Is the impious edict irrepealable?  Be it, that with legal forms it has stamped wives “wares.”  Can no legislation blot out the brand?  Must the handwriting of Deity on human nature be expunged for ever?  Has LAW no power to stay the erasing pen, and tear off the scrawled label that covers up the IMAGE OF GOD?