hey did not know--no man could
know, or can now measure, the extent, or the consequences of the
wrong, that they were doing. In the strong language of John Quincy
Adams,[96] in relation to the article fixing the basis of
representation, "Little did the members of the Convention, from the
free States, imagine or foresee what a sacrifice to Moloch was hidden
under the mask of this concession."

[Footnote 96: See his Report on the Massachusetts Resolutions.]

I verily believe that, giving all due consideration to the benefits
conferred upon this nation by the Constitution, its national unity,
its swelling masses of wealth, its power, and the external
prosperity of its multiplying millions; yet the _moral_ injury that
has been done, by the countenance shown to slavery by holding over
that tremendous sin the shield of the Constitution, and thus
breaking down in the eyes of the nation the barrier between right
and wrong; by so tenderly cherishing slavery as, in less than the
life of man, to multiply her children from half a million to nearly
three millions; by exacting oaths from those who occupy prominent
stations in society, that they will violate at once the rights of
man and the law of God; by substituting itself as a rule of right,
in place of the moral laws of the universe;--thus in effect,
dethroning the Almighty in the hearts of this people and setting up
another sovereign in his stead--more than outweighs it all. A
melancholy and monitory lesson this, to all timeserving and
temporising statesmen! A striking illustration of the _impolicy_ of
sacrificing _right_ to any considerations of expediency! Yet, what
better than the evil effects that we have seen, could the authors of
the Constitution have reasonably expected, from the sacrifice of
right, in the concessions they made to slavery? Was it reasonable in
them to expect that after they had introduced a vicious element into
the very Constitution of the body politic which they were calling
into life, it would not exert its vicious energies? Was it reasonable
in them to expect that, after slavery had been corrupting the public
morals for a whole generation, their children would have too much
virtue to _use_ for the defence of slavery, a power which they
themselves had not too much virtue to _give_? It is dangerous for
the sovereign power of a State to license immorality; to hold the
shield of its protection over any thing that is not "legal in a moral
view." Bring