cussions.--The population meanwhile was thinly scattered over the
country. The public papers were few, and small, and far between. They
could not even make such reports of the discussions of public bodies, as
newspapers now do. The consequence must have been that the people at
large knew nothing of the intentions of the framers of the constitution,
but from its words, until after it was adopted. Nevertheless, it is to
be constantly borne in mind, that even if the people had been fully
cognizant of those intentions, they would not therefore have adopted
them, or become at all responsible for them, so long as the intentions
themselves were not incorporated in the instrument. Many selfish,
ambitious and criminal purposes, not expressed in the constitution, were
undoubtedly intended to be accomplished by one and another of the
thousands of unprincipled politicians, that would naturally swarm around
the birth-place, and assist at the nativity of a new and splendid
government. But the people are not therefore responsible for those
purposes; nor are those purposes, therefore, a part of the constitution;
nor is its language to be construed with any view to aid their
accomplishment.

But even if the people intended to sanction slavery by adopting the
intentions of the convention, it is obvious that they, like the
convention, intended to use no language that should legally convey that
meaning, or that should necessarily convict them of that intention in
the eyes of the world.--They, at least, had enough of virtuous shame to
induce them to conceal this intention under the cover of language, whose
legal meaning would enable them always to aver,

"Thou canst not say I did it."

The intention, therefore, that the judiciary should construe certain
language into an authority for slavery, when such is not the legal
meaning of the language itself, cannot be ascribed to the people, except
upon the supposition that the people presumed their judicial tribunals
would have so much less of shame than they themselves, as to _volunteer_
to carry out these their secret wishes, by going beyond the words of the
constitution they should be sworn to support, and violating all legal
rules of construction, and all the free principles of the instrument. It
is true that the judiciary, (whether the people intended it or not,)
have proved themselves to be thus much, at least, more shameless than
the people, or the convention. Yet that is not what ough