implicated--that because, if the slavery
of the district was abolished, there would be no fewer slaves in the
country--that, therefore, the seat of government should not be
cleansed from its abomination. He would remind his opponent that they
were discussing a question of principle, and that the scriptures had
declared that he who was unjust in the least, was unjust also in the
greatest. Mr. Breckinridge had still cautiously avoided naming the
parties in the United States who were responsible for the sin of
Slavery. They were told that neither New Hampshire nor Massachusetts,
nor any other of the Northern states were to blame; that the
government was not to blame, nor, had it even yet been said, that the
Southern states were to blame. Still the aggregate of the guilt
belonged somewhere; and if the parties to whom reference had been made
were to be exculpated, at whose door, he would ask, were the sin and
shame of the system to be laid. The gentleman with whom he was
debating had repeatedly told him (Mr. T.) that he did not understand
'the system.' He frankly confessed that he did not. It was a
mystery of iniquity which he could not pretend to fathom; but he
thought he might add that the Americans themselves, at least the
Colonizationists, did not seem to understand it very well neither,
for they had been operating for a very long time, without effecting
any favorable change in the system. A word with regard to the
representation of slaves in Congress. Mr. B. had spoken as if he had
intended to have it understood, that the slaves were themselves
benefited by that representation--that it was a partial representation
of the slave population by persons in their interest. How stood the
fact? The slaves were not at all represented as men, but as things.
They swelled, it was true, the number of members upon the floor of
Congress, but that extra number only helped to rivet their bonds
tightly upon them, being as they were, in the interest of the tyrant,
and themselves slaveholders, and not in the interest of the slaves.
What said John Quincy Adams in his celebrated report on the Tariff:--

'The representation of the slave population in this House
has, from the establishment of the Constitution of the United
States, amounted to rather more than one-tenth of the whole
number. In the present Congress (1833,) it is equivalent to
twenty-two votes; in the next Congress it will amount to
twenty-five. This is a