Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/511

 without the consent of congress. Neither party is bound to form this connection. It can he formed only by the consent of both. What, then, prevents congress, as one of the stipulating parties, to propose its terms? And if the other party assents to these terms, why do they not effectually bind both parties 1 Or if the inhabitants of the territory do not choose to accept the proposed terms, but prefer to remain under a territorial government, has congress deprived them of any right, or subjected them to any restraint, which, in its discretion, it had do authority to do? If the admission of new states be not the discretionary exercise of a constitutional power, but in all cases an imperative duty, how is it to be performed? If the constitution means that congress shall admit new states, does it mean that congress shall do this on every application and under all circumstances? Or if this construction cannot be admitted, and if it must be conceded that congress must in some respects exercise its discretion on the admission of new states, how is it to be shown that that discretion may not be exercised in regard to this subject as well as in regard to others?

"The constitution declares, 'that the migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the congress prior to the year 1808.' It is most manifest that the constitution does contemplate, in the very terms of this clause, that congress possesses the authority to prohibit the migration or importation of slaves; for it limits the exercise of this authority for a specific period of time, leaving it to its full operation ever afterward. And this power seems necessarily included in the authority which belongs to congress, 'to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states.' No person has ever doubted that the prohibition of the foreign slave-trade was completely within the authority of congress since the year 1808. And why? Certainly only because it is embraced in the regulation of foreign commerce; and if so, it may for the like reason be prohibited since that period between the states. Commerce in slaves, since the year 1808, being as much subject to the regulation of congress as any other commerce, if it should see fit to enact that no slave should ever be sold from one state to another, it is not perceived how its constitutional right to make such provision could be questioned. It would seem to be too plain to be questioned, that congress did possess the power, before the year 1808, to prohibit the migration or importation of slaves into the territories (and in point of fact it exercised that power) as well as into any new states; and that its authority, after that year, might be as fully exercised to prevent the migration or importation of slaves into any of the old states. And if it may prohibit new states from importing slaves, it may surely, as we humbly submit, make it a condition of the admission of such states into the Union, that they shall never import them. In relation, too, to its own territories, congress possesses a more extensive authority, and may, in various other ways, effect the object. It might, for example, make it an express condition of its grants of soil, that its owners shall never hold slaves; and thus prevent the possession of slaves from ever being connected with the ownership of the soil.