or the seat of
Government. The Senator, as if conscious that his argument on this
point had proved too much, and of course had proven the converse of
what he wished to establish, concluded this part by saying, that if
slavery is abolished, the act ought to be confined to the city alone.
We thank him for this small sprinkling of correct opinion upon this
arid waste of public feeling. Liberty may yet vegetate and grow even
here.

The Senator insists that the States of Virginia and Maryland would
never have ceded this District if they had have thought slavery would
ever have been abolished in it. This is an old story twice told. It
was never, however, thought of, until the slave power imagined it, for
its own security. Let the States ask a retrocession of the District,
and I am sure the free States will rejoice to make the grant.

The Senator condemns the abolitionists for desiring that slavery
should not exist in the Territories, even in Florida. He insists that,
by the treaty, the inhabitants of that country have the right to
remove their EFFECTS when they please; and that, by this condition,
they have the right to retain their slaves as effects, independently
of the power of Congress. I am no diplomatist, sir, but I venture to
deny the conclusion of the Senator's argument. In all our intercourse
with foreign nations, in all our treaties in which the words "goods,
effects," &c. are used, slaves have never been considered as included.
In all cases in which slaves are the subject matter of controversy,
they are specially named by the word "slaves; and, if I remember
rightly, it has been decided in Congress, that slaves are not property
for which a compensation shall be made when taken for public use, (or
rather, slaves cannot be considered as taken for public use,) or as
property by the enemy, when they are in the service of the United
States. If I am correct, as I believe I am, in the positions I have
assumed, the gentleman can say nothing, by this part of his argument,
against abolitionists, for asking that slavery shall not exist in
Florida."

The gentleman contends that the power to remove slaves from one State
to another, for sale, is found in that part of the Constitution which
gives Congress the power to regulate commerce within the States, &c.
This argument is _non sequiter_, unless the honorable Senator can
first prove that slaves are proper articles for commerce. We say that
Congress have power over slaves on