at all. As a citizen of New York I am not responsible for the existence of slavery in any other State in the Union, and I cannot, further than the expression of my individual opinion, interfere with the relation existing between the master and his slave, without violating international law, striking at the mutual equality and independence of the States, and sapping the Constitution of the Union. The whole abolition movement of the nonslaveholding States as it has been carried on for now nearly thirty years we regard and for nearly the whole of that time have regarded as immoral, illegal, and its abettors as punishable by our laws.

We deny, and always have denied, the right of Congress to legislate on the subject. The Fugitive Slave Law is simply a law for executing a clause in the Constitution, which is in the nature of an extradition clause, in a treaty between independent sovereigns. We always regarded the so-called "Missouri Compromise" as unconstitutional. Slavery with us is purely a STATE institution, deriving from State sovereignty alone, and there is under our system no power to authorize or to abolish it, but the State itself, that is, the people in their State as distinguished from their Federal capacity. The State may or may not, as it chooses, authorize slavery, forbid it, or abolish it, without leave asked or obtained from the Union, or from her sister States. Congress has, then, no power to say to the States on one side of a given parallel of latitude you may, and on the other, you shall not, hold slaves. The Constitution gives it no such power either in respect of old States or new States. New York has been a slaveholding State since my recollection, and may become so again if she chooses. Congress has nothing to say on the subject, one way or the other. In the admission of new States, it has no right to say the State must come in with or without slaves. The State does not become a State by the act of admission, for it is admitted, and can be admitted, into the Union only as a State, and therefore must exist as a State before admission. When leave is given to a Territory to form a State Constitution for itself, and it has in accordance with the leave obtained formed its Constitution, and organized its State Government, it is a State, a free sovereign State, and till its admission, as independent of

the Union, as though it were a foreign nation. If Congress refuses to admit it, it does not fall back under the Territorial government, and become subject again to the Union, but remains a State outside of the Union, free and independent, with all the rights and capacities of a sovereign community. Congress then cannot dictate to the people of the Territory the provisions of the Constitution they adopt, and must treat them in relation to their Constitution, precisely as it must treat the States already in the Union. It has then nothing to say in the formation of their Constitution on the subject of slavery. When they have organized their State government, they have the right to apply for admission into the Union, and it is obligatory on Congress to admit them, if they have adopted a State government republican in its form. This settles the question as to the Missouri Compromise, and proves it to be unconstitutional.

The only case in which it can be pretended that Congress may interfere with the slave question is in the organization of Territorial governments; but it cannot even in this case interfere with it, because under our system slavery is purely a State question, and has no existence where there is no State. The Federal government is a government of express powers, and among its express powers there is none which gives it authority to introduce or abolish, to authorize or to prohibit slavery. Its powers in regard to Territories not yet erected into States are restricted to the necessities of the case, and must be exercised in accordance with the general principles of law. It may enforce the natural law, and is bound to protect all the rights which exist under the Common Law; but it can go. no farther, except by special constitutional provision. It has no authority to create new rights or to derogate from existing rights. But as slavery exists neither by the Common Law nor by the natural law, Congress cannot introduce it in a Territory; and as slavery exists only by virtue of municipal law, it cannot enter legally into any Territory while a Territory. So in no case has Congress or the Union any power over the question of slavery, and hence both the Missouri Compromise and the Wilmot Proviso are unconstitutional, and ought never to have been adopted.

The South agree that Congress has no power to legis

late slavery into a Territory, and the ground we took in our article is, that without the legislative action of Congress slavery cannot legally go into any Territory, while a Territory. We did not take this ground then for the first time. We took it on the passage of the Nebraska-Kansas Bill. Here is what we said.

"We are at a loss to understand the strong feeling against the Nebraska Bill. We think the bill inopportune and wholly uncalled for, but we see nothing in it, in so far as it bears on the question of slavery, worth getting excited about. It was, in our judgment, bad policy on the part of the friends of the administration to bring it forward at this time and under existing circumstances, but the principle of the bill, that of the non-intervention of the Federal government in the question of slavery, if indeed such be its principle, is unquestionably the only principle in accordance with the spirit of the Federal Constitution. When the Constitution was adopted, slavery existed in nearly all the States, and it was agreed that the subject of slavery should be reserved, except so far as concerned the recovery of slaves escaping from one State to another, to the States severally, and not be made a Federal question. Without this the Union could not have been formed. It was allowed to remain as a State question, and such it should continue to remain. The Federal Government is bound then to act on the principle of non-intervention. Its non-intervention necessarily excludes slavery from the Territories till they become States, because slavery according to a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, is a local institution, and can exist only by positive law, and no positive law can be enacted in a Territory but by the Federal government. If the Nebraska Bill is really framed on the principle of non-intervention, slavery cannot legally exist in Nebraska so long as it remains under a Territorial government, and the practical effect of the Bill must be to prevent it from ever becoming a Slave State.

"The pretence that the non-intervention of the Federal government leaves it to the people of the Territory to authorize slavery or not, as they see proper, is fallacious, because so long as it is a Territory and not a State, the people have no proper legislative authority, and their acts cannot, without the sanction of the Federal government, have the force of law. If a Territorial government passes an act authorizing slavery, and the Federal government expressly or tacitly approves it, or recognizes it as law, there is Federal intervention, a manifest violation of the principle of non-intervention. Therefore we say, the principle of non-intervention necessarily excludes slavery from every Territory till it becomes a State, that is, excludes it as legally authorized.-Quarterly Review, July, 1854, pp. 396,

397.

This ground we did not indeed take in 1847, in an ar

ticle on Slavery and the Mexican War. We changed our ground in 1854, on being assured that the Supreme Court had decided that slavery is a local institution, existing only by virtue of positive law, a fact of which I was not aware in 1847. I am told the decision of the Court does not go to the extent alleged. This may be so, but whether so or not is nothing to my present purpose. If the Court has not so decided, the opinion is incontrovertible, and although the alleged decision was the occasion of my adopting it, it is not the authority on which I defend it. Slavery is, whether the Supreme Court has so decided or not, a local institution, rightfully existing only by virtue of municipal law. Under the law of nature, there are no slaves, for all men are created equal, and one man has no jus dominii over another. Hence all Americans maintain that power, in whose hands soever lodged, is a trust, and a trust to be exercised for the good of the governed, for whose benefit the trust is created. Neither the Civil Law nor the Common Law authorizes slavery, and every lawyer knows that all the presumptions of law are in favor of freedom. There remains then no possible legal sanction of slavery but that of municipal law, which has no force out of the municipality. It exists with us, if it legally exists at all, by virtue of the local law of the State, and that law has and can have no extra-territorial jurisdiction. How then is it possible for slavery to have a legal status in territory included within no State, and subject, aside from the laws of Congress, to no law but the law of nature?

We have been told that slavery exists in the Union by usage, and that the usage which obtained in all the colonies from the beginning authorizes it to go wherever it is not forbidden. But we deny that slavery exists in the Union by usage, for it does not exist in the Union at all. It exists in the States by usage, if you will, but not in the Union. Slavery is a State, not a Federal institution. It was, we believe, introduced into the colonies without any positive law, and it continues to exist, as a matter of fact, in all the States that have not by positive law abolished or prohibited it. But the usage was that of distinct, and in relation to one another, independent colonies. The usage of one colony had, per se, no force in another, and though in fact it obtained in them all, it was never the common usage

of the whole, but the particular usage of each. The usage in question may or may not legalize slavery in the States which have not abolished it, but as law it is confined to each State separately without extra-territorial force or vigor. It cannot legalize it in a Territory not yet erected into a State, because Territories have and can have no local usage. Usage itself, moreover, is not law, and is recognized by the Courts as law, only because its long existence warrants the presumption that it has received the express or tacit sanction of the law-making power; and therefore no usage can have the force of law where there is no legislative authority competent to pass a law to the same effect. Give, therefore, to the usage or custom alleged all the force you can, since it is the usage or custom only of distinct colonies or distinct States, it can never authorize slavery, which does not exist by virtue of natural right or the jus gentium, out of the territorial jurisdiction of the particular State or colony. It is simply in its nature a municipal usage, and of no force save within the municipality.

We are told, again, that slaves are property, and the Union is bound to recognize and protect slave property as much as any other species of property. Very true, where slave property exists, but not where it does not exist. In the States where slaves are property, the Federal Courts are bound to treat them as property, and cannot discriminate between them and other species of property; but not therefore does it follow that it must treat them as property in the Territories, where no local law makes them property.

The territory of the Union, not yet erected into States, belongs, we are further told, to all the States in common, and as all the States are equal, the citizens of Slaveholding States must have the same right to migrate to them and settle on them with their property, that the citizens of the other States have to migrate to them and settle on them with their property. Most certainly, with that which is property out of their own State or in the Territory. No discrimination can be made between the citizens of one State and those of another. The citizen of South Carolina must be as free to settle in Nebraska, for instance, as the citizen of New York, and to carry with him every species of property that his New York brother can carry. The citizen of New York cannot carry with him his real