e age
of twenty-one. In some, it was made to depend on the possession of
personal property; and in others, of real property. That in the
Southern states, the power of voting should be given to the masters,
and not to the slaves, was not calculated to excite surprise in
Britain, where such a large proportion of the population, and that in
a number of instances composed of men of high intelligence, were not
entitled to the elective franchise. The origin of this arrangement,
like many others involved in our social system, was a compromise of
apparently conflicting interests in the states which were engaged in
forming the Federal Constitution. The identity of taxation and
representation, was the grand idea on which the nation went into the
war of independence. When it was agreed that all white citizens, and
three-fifths of all other persons, as the Constitution expresses it,
should be represented, it followed of course, that they should be
subject to taxation. Or, if it were first agreed that they should be
taxed, it followed as certainly they should be represented. Who should
actually cast the votes, was, of necessity, left to be determined by
the states themselves, and as has been said, was variously determined;
many permitting free negroes, Indians, and mulattos, who are all
embraced, as well as slaves, to vote. That three-fifths, instead of
any other part, or the whole should be agreed on, was, no doubt, the
result of reasons which appeared conclusive to the wise and benevolent
men who made the Constitution; but I am not able to tell what they
were. It must, however, be very clear, that to accuse my country, in
one breath, for treating the negroes, bond and free, as if they were
not human beings at all--and to accuse her in the next, of fostering
and encouraging slavery, for allowing so large a proportion of the
blacks to be a part of the basis of national representation in all the
states, and then, in the third, because the whole are not so treated,
to be more abusive than ever--is merely to show plainly, how earnestly
an occasion is sought to traduce America, and how hard it is to find
one. He came now to the last charge. He himself, it seems, had
admitted, on former occasions, that slavery was a national evil. He
certainly did believe that the people of America, whether anti-slavery
or pro-slavery, would be happier and better, in conscience and
feelings, were slavery abolished. He believed that every interest
would b