to the expense of life and money, involved in this undertaking, whether the people of the state invaded shall be united, as freemen naturally will be, as one man against the enemy? Or whether, as in slave states, half of them shall be burning to join the enemy, with the purpose of satisfying with blood the long account of wrong that shall have accrued against their oppressors ? Did Massachusetts-who during the war of the revolution furnished more men for the common defence, than all the six southern states together-did she, immediately on the close of that war, pledge herself, as the slave holders would have it, that she would lavish her life in like manner again, for the defence of those whose wickedness and tyranny in peace should necessarily multiply their enemies and make them defenceless in war? If so, on what principle, or for what equivalent, did she do it? Did she not rather take care that the guaranty for a republican government should be inserted in the same paragraph with that for protection against invasion, in order that both the principle and the extent of the liability she incurred, might distinctly appear?

The nation at large, then, as a political community under the constitution, have both interests and rights, and both of the most vital character, in the republicanism of each of the state governments. The guaranty given by the national constitution, securing such a government to each of the states, is therefore neither officious nor impertinent. On the contrary, this guaranty was a sine qua non to any national contract of union; and the enforcement of it is equally indispensable, if not to the continuance of the union at all, certainly to its continuance on any terms that are either safe, honorable or equitable for the north.

This guaranty, then, is not idle verbiage. It is full of meaning. And that meaning is not only fatal to slavery itself, but it is fatal also to all those pretences, constructions, surmises and implications, by which it is claimed that the national constitution sanctions, legalizes, or even tolerates slavery.

CHAPTER IX.

THE INTENTIONS OF THE CONVENTION.

THE intentions of the framers of the constitution, (if we could have, as we cannot, any legal knowledge of them, except from the words of the constitution,) have nothing to do with fixing the legal meaning of the constitution. That convention were not delegated to adopt or establish a constitution; but only to consult, devise and recommend. The instrument, when it came from their hands, was a mere proposal, having no legal force or authority. It finally derived all its validity and obligation, as a frame of government, from its adoption by the people at large.* Of course the intentions of the people at large are the only ones, that are of any importance to be regarded in determining the legal meaning of the instrument. And their intentions are to be gathered entirely from the words, which they adopted to express them. And their intentions must be presumed to be just what, and only what the words of the instrument legally express. In adopting the constitution, the people acted as legislators, in the highest sense in which that word can be applied to human lawgivers. They were establishing a law that was to govern both themselves and their government. And their intentions, like those of other legislators, are to be gathered from the words of their enactments. Such is the dic

*The Supreme Court say, "The instrument, when it came from their hands, (that is, the hands of the convention,) was a mere proposal, without obligation or pretension to it." "The people were at perfect liberty to accept or reject it; and their act was final."-M' Cullock vs. Maryland,4 Wheaton 403-4.

tate of both law and common sense. * The instrument had been reported by their committee, the convention. But the people did not ask this committee what was the legal meaning of the instrument reported. They adopted it, judging for themselves of its legal meaning, as any other legislative body would have done. The people at large had not even an opportunity of consultation with the members of the convention, to ascertain their opinions. And even if they had consulted them, they would not have been bound at all by their opinions. But being unable to consult them, they were compelled to adopt or reject the instrument, on their own judgment of its meaning, without any reference to the opinions of the convention. The instrument, therefore, is now to be regarded as expressing the intentions of the people at large; and not the intentions of the convention, if the convention had any intentions differing from the meaning which the law gives to the words of the instrument.

But why do the partizans of slavery resort to the debates of the convention for evidence that the constitution sanctions slavery? Plainly for no other reason than because the words of the instrument do not sanction it. But can the intentions of that convention, attested only by a mere skeleton of its debates, and not by any impress upon the instrument itself, add any thing to the words, or to the legal meaning of the words of the constitution? Plainly not. Their intentions are of no more consequence, in a legal point of view, than the intentions of any other equal number of the then voters of the country. Besides, as members of the convention, they were not even parties to the instrument; and no evidence of their intentions, at that time, is applicable to the They became parties to it only by joining with the rest of the people in its subsequent adoption; and they themselves,

case.

*The Supreme Court of the United States say:

"The intention of the instrument must prevail: this intention must be collected from its words."-Ogden vs. Saunders,-12 Wheaton, 332.

The intention of the legislature is to be searched for in the words which the legislature has employed to convey it.”—Schr. Paulina's Cargo vs. United States,-7 Cranch, 60.

equally with the rest of the people, must then be presumed to have adopted its legal meaning, and that alone—notwithstanding any thing they may have previously said. What absurdity then is it to set up the opinions expressed in the convention, and by a few only of its members, in opposition to the opinions expressed by the whole people of the country, in the constitution itself.

But notwithstanding the opinions expressed in the convention by some of the members, we are bound, as a matter of law, to presume that the convention itself, in the aggregate, had no intention of sanctioning slavery-and why? Because, after all their debates, they agreed upon an instrument that did not sanction it. This was confessedly the result in which all their debates terminated. This instrument is also the only authentic evidence of their intentions. It is subsequent in its date to all the other evidence. It comes to us, also, as none of the other evidence does, signed with their own hands. And is this to be set aside, and the constitution itself to be impeached and destroyed, and free government overturned, on the authority of a few meagre snatches of argument, intent or opinion, uttered by a few only of the members; jotted down by one of them, (Mr. Madison,) merely for his own convenience, or from the suggestions of his own mind; and only reported to us fifty years afterwards by a posthumous publication of his papers? If any thing could excite the utter contempt of the people of this nation for the miserable subterfuges, to which the advocates of slavery resort, it would seem that their offering such evidence as this in support of their cause, must do it. And yet these, and such as these mere fragments of evidence, all utterly inadmissible and worthless in their kind, for any legal purpose, constitute the warp and the woof, the very sine qua non of the whole argument for slavery.

Did Mr. Madison, when he took his oath of office, as president of the United States, swear to support these scraps of debate, which he had filed away among his private papers?—

Or did he swear to support that written instrument, which the people of the country had agreed to, and which was known to them, and to all the world, as the constitution of the United States.*

But even if the unexpressed intentions, which these notes of debate ascribe to certain members, had been participated in by the whole convention, we should have had no right to hold the people of the country at large responsible for them. This convention sat with closed doors, and it was not until

* "Elliot's Debates," so often referred to, are, if possible, a more miserable authority than Mr. Madison's notes. He seems to have picked up the most of them from the newspapers of the day, in which they were reported by nobody now probaably knows whom. In his preface to his first volume, containing the debates in the Massachusetts and New York conventions, he says:

"In the compilation of this volume, care has been taken to search into contemporary publications, in order to make the work as perfect as possible; still, however, the editor is sensible, from the daily experience of newspaper reports, of the present time, that the sentiments they contain may, in some instances,have been inaccurately taken down, and in others, probably too faintly sketched, fully to gratify the inquisitive politician." He also speaks of them as "rescued from the ephemeral prints of that day, and now, for the first time, presented in a uniform and durable form."

In the preface to his second volume, which is devoted to the Virginia convention, he says the debates were reported by an able stenographer, David Robertson; and then quotes the following from Mr. Wirt, in a note to the life of Patrick Henry : "From the skill and ability of the reporter, there can be no doubt that the substance of the debates, as well as their general course, are accurately preserved." In his preface to the third volume, embracing the North Carolina and Pennsylvania conventions, he says:

"The first of the two North Carolina conventions is contained in this volume; the second convention, it is believed, was neither systematically reported nor printed." "The debates in the Pennsylvania convention, that have been preserved, it appears, are on one side only; a search into the contemporary publications of the day, has been unsuccessful to furnish us with the other side of the question."

In his preface to the fourth volume, he says:

"In compiling the opinions, on constitutional questions, delivered in congress, by some of the most enlightened senators and representatives, the files of the New York and Philadelphia newspapers, from 1789 to 1800, had to be relied on; from the latter period to the present, the National Intelligencer is the authority consulted for the desired information."

It is from such stuff as this,collected and published thirty-five and forty years after the constitution was adopted-stuff very suitable for constitutional dreams to be made of that our courts and people now make their constitutional law, in preference to adopting the law of the constitution itself. In this way they manufacture law strong enough to bind three millions of men in slavery.