vention which formed our Federal Constitution, that the contests
would be between the great geographical sections; that such had been
the division, even during the war and the confederacy.

In the same convention, Charles Pinckney, a man of great sagacity, spoke
of the equal representation of large and small States as a matter of
slight consequence; no difficulties, he said, would ever arise on that
point; the question would always be between the slaveholding and
non-slaveholding interests.

If the pressure of common danger, and the sense of individual weakness,
during our contest for independence, could not bring the States to
mutual confidence, nothing ever can do it, except a change of character.
From the adoption of the constitution to the present time, the breach
has been gradually widening. The South has pursued a uniform and
sagacious system of policy, which, in all its bearings, direct and
indirect, has been framed for the preservation and extension of slave
power. This system has, in the very nature of the two things, constantly
interfered with the interests of the free States; and hitherto the South
have always gained the victory. This has principally been accomplished
by yoking all important questions together _in pairs_, and strenuously
resisting the passage of one, unless accompanied by the other. The South
was desirous of removing the seat of government from Philadelphia to
Washington, because the latter is in a slave territory, where republican
representatives and magistrates can bring their slaves without danger of
losing them, or having them contaminated by the principles of universal
liberty. The assumption of the State debts, likely to bring considerable
money back to the North, was _linked_ with this question, and both were
carried. The admission of Maine into the Union as a free State, and of
Missouri as a slave State, were two more of these Siamese twins, not
allowed to be separated from each other. A numerous smaller progeny may
be found in the laying of imposts, and the successive adjustment of
protection to navigation, the fisheries, agriculture, and manufactures.

There would perhaps be no harm in this system of compromises, or any
objection to its continuing in infinite series, if no injustice were
done to a third party, which is never heard or noticed, except for
purposes of oppression.

I reverence the wisdom of our early legislators; but they certainly
did very wrong to admit slavery as