ition of slavery in the North West
Territory; a territory which she had herself ceded to Congress, and
along with it had surrendered her jurisdiction over many of her
citizens, inhabitants of that territory, who held slaves there--and
whose slaves were emancipated by that act of Congress, in which all her
delegation with one accord participated?

Now in view of the universal belief then prevalent, that slavery in this
country was doomed to short life, and especially that in Maryland and
Virginia it would be _speedily_ abolished--are we to be told that those
states _designed_ to bind Congress _never_ to terminate it? Are we to
adopt the monstrous conclusion that this was the intent of the Ancient
Dominion--thus to _bind_ the United States by an "implied faith," and
that when the United States _accepted_ the cession, she did solemnly
thus plight her troth, and that Virginia did then so _understand_ it?
Verily one would think that honorable senators supposed themselves
deputed to do our _thinking_ as well as our legislation, or rather, that
they themselves were absolved from such drudgery by virtue of their
office!

Another absurdity of this dogma about "implied faith" is, that where
there was no power to exact an _express_ pledge, there was none to
demand an _implied_ one, and where there was no power to _give_ the one,
there was none to give the _other_. We have shown already that Congress
could not have accepted the cession with such a condition. To have
signed away a part of its constitutional grant of power would have been
a _breach_ of the Constitution. Further, the Congress which accepted the
cession was competent to pass a resolution pledging itself not to _use
all_ the power over the District committed to it by the Constitution.
But here its power ended. Its resolution would only bind _itself_. Could
it bind the _next_ Congress by its authority? Could the members of one
Congress say to the members of another, because we do not choose to
exercise all the authority vested in us by the Constitution, therefore
you _shall_ not? This would have been a prohibition to do what the
Constitution gives power to do. Each successive Congress would still
have gone to the Constitution for its power, brushing away in its course
the cobwebs stretched across its path by the officiousness of an
impertinent predecessor. Again, the legislatures of Virginia and
Maryland, had no power to bind Congress, either by an express or an
implie