Washington sentinel., 1854-04-07

| Now, sir, and here, and in behalf of South
Carolina, is it too much to ask gentlemen in this
hall who have asserted that Mr.. Calhoun sane
toned the constitutionality of the Missouri com
promise, and the public press which have circu
lated 1t, If not to correct the error, at least to
forbear repeating it.
l pass on now, Mr.. Chairman, to the second
| proposition advanced by those who oppose the
emigration ofthe citizens ofthe south with their
slaves to the common territory. They assert
that property in slaves is local. Let US ex-
anime the meaning of this phrase. DO they
mean that it is created by legislative enact
ment, or that it has its origin In positive law
If SO, they are ignorant of the philosophy of
property. Law does not create it; 1t only
springs up to protect and regulate it when it
preexists Slavery antedates recorded history
and positive law. 1t is the oldest form of prop
erty recognised, and as defensible as any other
kind. In no southern State is there positive
enactment declaring that there shall be such
property; but there are any many acts recog-
nising and protecting it. 1t, like all other
property, is regarded by the law relating to
it as pre-existing thing. When it was in
troduced into the American colonies, it rested
on no positive act; but laws soon clustered
around it, to protect and regulate it.
The common law of every people among
whom it exists sanctions it; the common law
of no people sanctions property which does
not exist among them. The common law is
the accretion of rules for the governance of
the society over which it prevails; and, as it
grows out of the social exigencies, it applies
only to the status of the people among whom
it exists. Thus, as soon as slavery was intro
- Al l., .1al
originated usages or laws to protect it. Sla-
very, then, like other property, is not created
by law, but, being pre-existent is only protec-
| ted and regulated by it. In no sense is sla-
| very more local than other property. Amy
kind of property, if carried beyond the author
ity of the State which recognises it into the ju.
| risdiction of one which does not recognise it,
| loses its character as property, unless it can
| plead the sanction of international law,
| through the stress of circumstances which
that law acknowledges. If carried, however,
into State which recognises it as susceptible
Of property, it is still property, though subject
to the laws of the State into which it is car
ried. This is true of every kind of property.
Property in slaves is no more local than any
other kind Of property; only the number of
sovereign governments which recognise it as
property are fewer than the number which
recognise most other kinds of property. The
action of foreign or sovereign governments,
however, has nothing to do with the rights of
the south in this matter. The simple question
is, must not the federal government, as our
agent or trustee, recognise and protect it in
the common territory?
The federal government has no right to deter
mine what is property. That iSeft entirely to
the States as sovereign bodies. Whatever a
State determines is property, that the federal
government is bound, by the very principles Of
Its Constitution, to recognise and protect as
such. The territory being the common prop
erty of all the States, and the citizens of each
State being equally entitled to its enjoyment,
while the right to determine what is property
belongs alone to the States, it is clear that the
federal agent can make no distinction or dis
elimination between the States or their citi-
zens. Each State determines what is property
within her limits; and whatever she determines
to be such, the federal government, as her
agent is bound to regard as property also in
the Territory, which belongs equally to all the
States-belongs to them per mi and per tout.
1t is the merest quibbling to ask if the different
State laws are to go to the territory. Nearly
all the laws of the various States, in relation to
almost all kinds of property, are different.
Do they 60 to the territory? And, if not, are
the kinds of property about which they differ
| excluded from it? No, the duty of the federal
| government is to protect in the Territory what
ever State determines. to be property. Fif
teen States in this Union still determine thai
there is property in the African slave, and the
federal agent is pledged to recognise and pro
ect If.
Sir the first question in this controversy is as
to the nature and character of our system OF
| polity. If the federal government is sovereign,
| then it may, in the exercise of naked power,
exclude whom and what property it pleases
from the Territory. fit is sovereign, then the
Constitution is abdicated, and we are enslaved
by an irresponsible popular despotism. Sir,
of all tyrannies the popular tyranny is the
most base and devastating, because its appe-
tites are the most gross and inappeasable, its
life the most convulsive, and its acts the most
curst with crime and wrong Sir, popular
| tyranny is popular lawlessness, and public pill.
lage. l pray God to shield our land from a
curse as desolating as this-from sword which
will smite down the Constitution, and slay the
very spirit of republican freedom. And yet
upon the ruins of this once well-balanced sys-
TEN, you are rearing this deformed and mon
strous hydra. Rear it, and the sterile tract of
your future history will be unirradiated by
single act of justice. Sir, you cannot escape
this consummation, if you hang sovereignty
around this federal government and make the
State the mere provinces of a, consolidated
| empire. To do this you must upheave all our
constitutional landmarks, and, like Cortes, ex
tinguishing all memory Of the old world in the
ashes of his blazing feet and looking only to
the new, you must burn up in the fires of
fanaticism all the proud glories and history of
the past and turn unaided and blindly to the
lowering future.
The whole course Of this slavery agitation
has been to aggrandize the federal government
A misconception Of its powers and functions
excited northern fanaticism into action, and
that misconception, with increasing sectional
power, has broadened aud deepened, until the
very origin and scope Of this government is be-
ing overlooked and forgotten. Tie up Congress
within the limits of its appropriate duties, and
you expel this agitation.
The second great question involved in the
controversy is property itself You deny that
there is property in the slave. Your denial