sions are at war with
the law of God and the rights of man, and therefore are not
obligatory. Whatever may be their character, they are
_constitutionally_ obligatory; and whoever feels that he cannot
execute them, or swear to execute them, without committing sin, has no
other choice left than to withdraw from the government, or to violate
his conscience by taking on his lips an impious promise. The object of
the Constitution is not to define _what is the law of God_, but WHAT IS
THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE--which will is not to be frustrated by an
ingenious moral interpretation, by those whom they have elected to
serve them.

ARTICLE 1, Sect. 2, provides--"Representatives and direct taxes
shall be apportioned among the several States, which may be included
within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which
shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons,
including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding
Indians not taxed, _three-fifths of all other persons_."

Here, as in the clause we have already examined, veiled beneath a
form of words as deceitful as it is unmeaning in a truly democratic
government, is a provision for the safety, perpetuity and
augmentation of the slaveholding power--a provision scarcely less
atrocious than that which related to the African slave trade, and
almost as afflictive in its operation--a provision still in force,
with no possibility of its alteration, so long as a majority of the
slave States choose to maintain their slave system--a provision which,
at the present time, enables the South to have twenty-five additional
representatives in Congress on the score of _property_, while the
North is not allowed to have one--a provision which concedes to the
oppressed three-fifths of the political power which is granted to
all others, aid then puts this power into the hands of their
oppressors, to be wielded by them for the more perfect security of
their tyrannous authority, and the complete subjugation of the
non-slaveholding States.

Referring to this atrocious bargain, ALEXANDER HAMILTON remarked in
the New York Convention--

"The first thing objected to, is that clause which allows a
representation for three-fifths of the negroes. Much has been said
of the impropriety of representing men who have no will of their own:
whether this is _reasoning_ or _declamation_, (!!) I will not
presume to say. It is the _unfortunate_ situation of the Southern