The first of these clauses, relating to representation, confers on a slaveholding community additional political power for every slave held among them, and thus tempts them to continue to uphold the system:  the second and the last, relating to insurrection and domestic violence, perfectly innocent in themselves—­yet being made with the fact directly in view that slavery exists among us, do deliberately pledge the whole national force against the unhappy slave if he imitate our fathers and resist oppression—­thus making us partners in the guilt of sustaining slavery:  the third, relating to the slave-trade, disgraces the nation by a pledge not to abolish that traffic till after twenty years, without obliging Congress to do so even then, and thus the slave-trade may be legalized to-morrow if Congress choose:  the fourth is a promise on the part of the whole Nation to return fugitive slaves to their masters, a deed which God’s law expressly condemns and which every noble feeling of our nature repudiates with loathing and contempt.

These are the articles of the “Compromise,” so much talked of, between the North and South.

We do not produce the extracts which make up these pages to show what is the meaning of the clauses above cited.  For no man or party, of any authority in such matters, has ever pretended to doubt to what subject they all relate.  If indeed they were ambiguous in their terms, a resort to the history of those times would set the matter at rest forever.  A few persons, to be sure, of late years, to serve the purposes of a party, have tried to prove that the Constitution makes no compromise with slavery.  Notwithstanding the clear light of history;—­the unanimous decision of all the courts in the land, both State and Federal;—­the action of Congress and the State Legislature;—­the constant practice of the Executive in all its branches;—­and the deliberate acquiescence of the whole people for half a century, still they contend that the Nation does not know its own meaning, and that the Constitution does not tolerate slavery!  Every candid mind, however, must acknowledge that the language of the Constitution is clear and explicit.

Its terms are so broad, it is said, that they include many others beside slaves, and hence it is wisely (!) inferred that they cannot include the slaves themselves!  Many persons besides slaves in this country doubtless are “held to service and labor under the laws of the States,” but that does not at all show that slaves are not “held to service;” many persons beside the slaves may take part “in insurrections,” but that does not prove that when the slaves rise, the National Government is not bound to put them down by force.  Such a thing has been heard of before as one description including a great variety of persons,—­and this is the case in the present instance.