The equality of rights, which includes an equality of burdens, is a vital principle in our theory of government, and its jealous preservation is the best security of public and individual freedom; the departure from this principle in the disproportionate power and influence, allowed to the slaveholding States, was a necessary sacrifice to the establishment of the Constitution.  The effect of this concession has been obvious in the preponderance which it has given to the slaveholding States over the other States.  Nevertheless, it is an ancient settlement, and faith and honor stand pledged not to disturb it.  But the extension of this disproportionate power to the new States would be unjust and odious.  The States whose power would be abridged, and whose burdens would be increased by the measure, cannot be expected to consent to it, and we may hope that the other States are too magnanimous to insist on it.

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It ought not to be forgotten that the first and main object of the negotiation which led to the acquisition of Louisiana, was the free navigation of the Mississippi, a river that forms the sole passage from the western States to the ocean.  This navigation, although of general benefit, has been always valued and desired, as of peculiar advantage to the Western States, whose demands to obtain it were neither equivocal nor unreasonable.  But with the river Mississippi, by a sort of coercion, we acquired, by good or ill fortune, as our future measures shall determine, the whole province of Louisiana.  As this acquisition was made at the common expense, it is very fairly urged that the advantages to be derived from it should also be common.  This, it is said, will not happen if slavery be excluded from Missouri, as the citizens of the States where slavery is permitted will be shut out, and none but citizens of States where slavery is prohibited, can become inhabitants of Missouri.

But this consequence will not arise from the proposed exclusion of slavery.  The citizens of States in which slavery is allowed, like all other citizens, will be free to become inhabitants of Missouri, in like manner as they have become inhabitants of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, in which slavery is forbidden.  The exclusion of slaves from Missouri will not, therefore, operate unequally among the citizens of the United States.  The Constitution provides, “that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States”; every citizen may, therefore, remove from one to another State, and there enjoy the rights and immunities of its citizens.  The proposed provision excludes slaves, not citizens, whose rights it will not, and cannot impair.