and Femme_," p. 340-1.] Each of the laws enumerated above, does,
_in principle_, abolish slavery; and all of them together abolish it in
fact. True, not as a _whole_, and at a _stroke_, nor all in one place;
but in its _parts_, by piecemeal, at divers times and places; thus
showing that the abolition of slavery is within the boundary of
legislation.

5. THE COMPETENCY OF THE LAW-MAKING POWER TO ABOLISH SLAVERY, HAS BEEN
RECOGNIZED BY ALL THE SLAVEHOLDING STATES, EITHER DIRECTLY OR BY
IMPLICATION. Some States recognize it in their _Constitutions_, by
giving the legislature power to emancipate such slaves as may "have
rendered the state some distinguished service, "and others by express
prohibitory restrictions. The Constitution of Mississippi, Arkansas, and
other States, restrict the power of the legislature in this respect. Why
this express prohibition, if the law-making power _cannot_ abolish
slavery? A stately farce, indeed, to construct a special clause, and
with appropriate rites induct it into the Constitution, for the express
purpose of restricting a nonentity!--to take from the law-making power
what it _never had_, and what _cannot_ pertain to it! The legislatures
of those States have no power to abolish slavery, simply because their
Constitutions have expressly _taken away_ that power. The people of
Arkansas, Mississippi, &c., well knew the competency of the law-making
power to abolish slavery, and hence their zeal to _restrict_ it.

The slaveholding States have recognised this power in their _laws_. The
Virginia Legislature passed a law in 1786 to prevent the further
importation of Slaves, of which the following is an extract: "And be it
further enacted that every slave imported into this commonwealth
contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act, shall upon such
importation become _free_." By a law of Virginia, passed Dec. 17, 1792,
a slave brought into the state and kept _there a year_, was _free_. The
Maryland Court of Appeals at the December term 1813 [case of Stewart
_vs._ Oakes,] decided that a slave owned in Maryland, and sent by his
master into Virginia to work at different periods, making one year in
the whole, became _free_, being _emancipated_ by the law of Virginia
quoted above. North Carolina and Georgia in their acts of cession,
transferring to the United States the territory now constituting the
States of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, made it a condition of the
grant, that the provis