a society. Everywhere north of South Carolina, slavery was looked upon as a misfortune which it was exceedingly desirable to be free from at the earliest possible moment; everywhere north of Mason and Dixon's Line, measures had already been taken, or were certain soon to be taken, to put an end to it; and by the Ordinance for the government of all the territory north of the Ohio River, it was absolutely prohibited by Congress, in the same year in which the Constitutional Congress met.

But it was, nevertheless, a thing to the continued existence of which the anti-slavery people of that time could consent without any violation of conscience. Bad as it was, unwise, wasteful, cruel, a mockery of every pretense of respect for the rights of man, they did not believe it to be absolutely wicked. If they had so believed, let us hope they would have washed their hands of it. As it was, it was only a question of expediency whether, for the sake of the Union, they should protect the system of slavery, and give to the slave-holders, as slave-holders, a certain degree of political power. To refuse to admit a slave-holding State into the Union did not occur, probably, to the most earnest opponent of the system; for that would have been simply to say that there should be no Union. That was what Madison meant in saying so repeatedly that the real difficulty in the way was, not the difference between

the large and the small States, but the difference between the slave-holding and the non slave-holding States. If there could be no conciliation on that point there could be no Union.

Some hoped, perhaps, rather than believed, that slavery was likely to disappear ere long at the South as it was disappearing at the North. It is an impeachment of their intelligence, however, to suppose that they relied much upon any such hope. The simple truth is that slavery was then, as it continued to be for three quarters of a century longer, the paramount interest of the South. To withstand or disregard it was not merely difficult, but was to brave immediate possible dangers and sufferings, which are never voluntarily encountered except in obedience to the highest sense of duty; or to meet a necessity, from which there was no manly way of escape. The sense of absolute duty was wanting; the necessity, it was hoped, might be avoided by concessions. It can only be said for those who made them that they did not see what fruitful seeds of future trouble they were sowing in the Constitution.

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CHAPTER VIII.

"THE COMPROMISES."

THE question with the North was, how far could it yield; with the South, how far could it encroach. It turned mainly on representation; on "the unimportant anomaly," as Mr. George Ticknor Curtis calls it in his "History of the Constitution," "of a representation of men without political rights or social privileges." However much they differed upon the subject in the convention, there was nobody then and there who regarded the question as "unimportant;" nor was there a political event to happen for the coming eighty years that it did not influence and generally govern. There were some who maintained at first that the slave population should not be represented at all. Hamilton proposed in the first days of the convention "that the rights of suffrage in the national legislature ought to be proportioned to the number of free inhabitants." Madison was willing to concede this in one branch of the legislature, provided that in the representation in the other House the slaves were counted as free inhabitants. The constitution of the Senate subsequently disposed of that proposition.

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But why should slaves be represented at all? They are not free agents," said Patterson, a delegate to the convention from New Jersey; they "have no personal liberty, no faculty of acquiring property; but, on the contrary, are themselves property, and, like other property, entirely at the will of the master. Has a man in Virginia a number of votes in proportion to the number of his slaves? And if negroes are not represented in the States to which they belong, why should they be represented in the general government?

If a meeting of the people was actually to take place in a slave State, would the slaves vote? They would not. Why, then, should they be represented in a federal government?" There could be but one reply; but that was one which it would not have been wise to make. It was slave property that was to be represented, and this would not be submitted to among slave-holders as against each other, while yet they were a unit in insisting upon it in a union with those who were not slave-holders. Among themselves slavery needed no protection; their safety was in equality. But to their great interest every non-slaveholder was, in the nature of things, an enemy; and prudence required that the power either to vote him down or to buy him up should never be wanting. It was as much a matter of instinct as of deliberation, for love of life is the first law. The truth was covered up in Madison's specious asser

tion that "every peculiar interest, whether in any class of citizens or any description of States, ought to be secured as far as possible." The only "peculiar" interest, however, belonging either to citizens or States, that was imbedded in the Constitution, was slavery.

So Wilson of Pennsylvania asked: "Are they [the slaves] admitted as citizens - then why are they not admitted on an equality with white citizens? Are they admitted as property - then why is not other property admitted into the computation?" He was willing, however, to concede that it was a difficulty to be "overcome by the necessity of compromise.'

Com

Never, probably, in the history of legislation, was there a more serious question debated. promise is ordinarily understood to mean an adjustment by mutual concessions, where there are rights on both sides. Here it meant whether the side, which had no shadow of right whatever to that which it demanded, would consent to take a little less than the whole. It was the kind of compromise made between the bandit and his victim when the former decides that he will not put himself to the trouble of shooting the other, and will even leave him his shirt. It was not difficult to understand that horses and cattle could be justly counted only where property was to be the basis of representation. Yet the slaves, who were counted, were, in the eye of the law, either per