of it,--that
in this part of their work they _intended_ to hold the shield of their
protection over a wrong, knowing that it was a wrong. They made a
"compromise" which they had no right to make--a compromise of moral
principle for the sake of what they probably regarded as "political
expediency." I am sure they did not know--no man could know, or can
now measure, the extent, or the consequences of the wrong that they
were doing. In the strong language of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS,[14] in
relation to the article fixing the basis of representation, "Little
did the members of the Convention, from the free States, imagine or
foresee what a sacrifice to Moloch was hidden under the mask of this
concession."

[Footnote 14: See his Report on the Massachusetts Resolutions.]

I verily believe that, giving all due consideration to the benefits
conferred upon this nation by the Constitution, its national unity,
its swelling masses of wealth, its power, and the external prosperity
of its multiplying millions; yet the moral injury that has been done,
by the countenance shown to slavery; by holding over that tremendous
sin the shield of the Constitution, and thus breaking down in the eyes
of the nation the barrier between right and wrong; by so tenderly
cherishing slavery as, in less than the life of a man, to multiply her
children from half a million to nearly three millions; by enacting
oaths from those who occupy prominent stations in society, that they
will violate at once the rights of man and the law of God; by
substituting itself as a rule of right, in place of the moral laws of
the universe;--thus in effect, dethroning the Almighty in the hearts
of this people and setting up another sovereign in his stead--more
than outweighs it all. A melancholy and monitory lesson this, to all
time-serving and temporizing statesmen! A striking illustration of the
_impolicy_ of sacrificing _right_ to any considerations of expediency!
Yet, what better than the evil effects that we have seen, could the
authors of the Constitution have reasonably expected, from the
sacrifice of right, in the concessions they made to slavery? Was it
reasonable in them to expect that, after they had introduced a vicious
element into the very Constitution of the body politic which they were
calling into life, it would not exert its vicious energies? Was it
reasonable in them to expect that, after slavery had been corrupting
the public morals for a whole generation, th