Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/442

 that clause were said to be slaves. He could not think it satisfactory to be told that there was an understanding on this subject between the northern and southern members of the national convention. He trusted there was no trafficking in the convention. When considering our constitutional powers, we must judge of them by the face of the instrument under which we sit, and not by the certain understandings which the framers of that instrument may be supposed to have had with each other, but which never transpired. At any rate, the constitution was not obligatory until ratified by a certain number of state conventions, which can not be supposed to have been acquainted with the understanding in the national convention, but must be taken to have ratified the constitution on its own merits, as they appear on the face of the instrument. He had the honor of a seat in one of those conventions, and gave his assent to the constitution on those principles. He did then, he did now, and he ever should, judge of the powers of congress by the words of the constitution, with as much latitude as if it were a thousand years old, and every man in the convention that framed it long since in his grave.

"I acknowledge," he added, "that by this clause of the constitution congress is denied the power of prohibiting, for a limited period, the importation or migration of persons, but may impose a tax or duty; and I say, as well on the white as on the black person. But some certain inadmissible qualities may be adherent to persons which, from the necessity of things, must and will, notwithstanding this provision, justify the exclusion of the persons themselves, such as a plague, or hostile designs against the union by armed immigrants. In such a case, if the importation were not prevented, I should be more inclined to impute it to want of physical than of constitutional power. In consistency with this mode of reasoning, I believe that if congress should at any time be of opinion that a state of slavery attached to a person is a quality altogether inadmissible into America, they would not be bound by the clause above cited from prohibiting that hateful quality. As in the first case the plague, and in the second the enmity and arms, so in the third the state of slavery may, notwithstanding any thing in this clause, be declared by congress qualities, or conditions, or adherents, or what you please to call them, which, being attached to any person, the person himself can not be admitted.

"By another clause of the constitution, congress have power to regulate trade. Under that head not only the proposition now under consideration, but any other or further regulation which to congress may seem expedient, is fully in their power. Nay, sir, if these wretched Africans are to be considered as property, as some gentlemen would have it, and, consequently, as subjects of trade and commerce, they and their masters so far lose the benefit of their personality, that congress may at pleasure declare them contraband goods, and so prohibit the trade altogether.

"Again, sir, congress have power to establish a rule of naturalization. This rule, it is clear, depends on the mere pleasure of congress. Whenever they may declare, by law, that any and every person, black or white, who from foreign ports can only get his or her foot on the American shore, within the