United States relative to
this subject, and to the rights of the citizens of Missouri resulting
from the terms of the cession of Louisiana, and of the act admitting it
into the Union. From this recapitulation and illustration he
demonstrates, beyond refutation, that Congress possesses the power to
exclude slavery from Missouri. The only question now remaining was to
show that it ought to exclude it. In discussing this point, Mr. King
passes over in silence arguments which to some might appear decisive,
but the use of which in the Senate of the United States would call up
feelings that he apprehended might disturb or defeat the impartial
consideration of the subject.

Under this self-restraint he observed that slavery, unhappily, exists
in the United States; that enlightened men in the states where it is
permitted, and everywhere out of them, regret its existence among us,
and seek for the means of limiting and of eradicating it. He then
proceeds to state and reason concerning the difficulties in the
apportionment of taxes among the respective states under the old
confederation, and in the convention for the formation of the
constitution, which resulted in the provision that direct taxes should
be apportioned among the states according to the whole number of free
persons and three fifths of the slaves which they might respectively
contain. The effect of this provision he then analyzes, and shows that,
in consequence of it, _five_ free persons in Virginia have as much
power in the choice of representatives, and in the appointment of
presidential electors, as _seven_ free persons in any of the states in
which slavery does not exist. At the time of the adoption of the
constitution no one anticipated the fact that the whole of the revenue
of the United States would be derived from indirect taxes; but it was
believed that a part of the contribution to the common treasury would
be apportioned among the states, by the rule for the apportionment of
representatives. The states in which slavery is prohibited ultimately,
though with reluctance, acquiesced in the disproportionate number of
representatives and electors that was secured to the slaveholding
states. The concession was at the time believed to be a great one, and
has proved the greatest which was made to secure the adoption of the
constitution. Great as is this concession, it was definite, and its
full extent was comprehended. It was a settlement between the thirteen
st