require the master to give sufficient food and clothing; nor prohibit the violent sundering of families—­because such provisions would conflict with the existing slave laws of Virginia and Maryland, and thus violate the “good faith implied,” &c.  So the principle of the resolution binds Congress in all these particulars:  1st.  Not to abolish slavery in the District until Virginia and Maryland abolish. 2d.  Not to abolish any part of it that exists in those states. 3d.  Not to abolish any form or appendage of it still existing in those states. 4th.  To abolish when they do. 5th.  To increase or abate its rigors when, how, and as the same are modified by those states.  In a word, Congressional action in the District is to float passively in the wake of legislative action on the subject in those states.

But here comes a dilemma.  Suppose the legislation of those states should steer different courses—­then there would be two wakes!  Can Congress float in both?  Yea, verily!  Nothing is too hard for it!  Its obsequiousness equals its “power of legislation in all cases whatsoever.”  It can float up on the Virginia tide, and ebb down on the Maryland.  What Maryland does, Congress will do in the Maryland part.  What Virginia does, Congress will do in the Virginia part.  Though it might not always be able to run at the bidding of both at once, especially in different directions, yet if it obeyed orders cheerfully, and “kept in its place,” according to its “good faith implied,” impossibilities might not be rigidly exacted.  True, we have the highest sanction for the maxim that no man can serve two masters—­but if “corporations have no souls,” analogy would absolve Congress on that score, or at most give it only a very small soul—­not large enough to be at all in the way, as an exception to the universal rule laid down in the maxim!

In following out the absurdities of this “implied good faith,” it will be seen at once that the doctrine of Mr. Clay’s Resolution extends to all the subjects of legislation existing in Maryland and Virginia, which exist also within the District.  Every system, “institution,” law, and established usage there, is placed beyond Congressional control equally with slavery, and by the same “implied faith.”  The abolition of the lottery system in the District as an immorality, was a flagrant breach of this “good faith” to Maryland and Virginia, as the system “still continued in those states.”  So to abolish imprisonment for debt, or capital punishment, to remodel the bank system, the power of corporations, the militia law, laws of limitation, &c., in the District, unless Virginia and Maryland took the lead, would violate the “good faith implied in the cession.”