ame political power and
influence in the Representatives Hall at Washington, as sixty
Massachusetts men like you and me, who "eat their bread in the sweat
of their own brows."

According to the census of 1830, and the ratio of representation
based upon that, slave property added twenty-five members to the
House of Representatives. And as it has been estimated, (as an
approximation to the truth,) that the two and a half million slaves
in the United States are held as property by about two hundred and
fifty thousand persons--giving an average of ten slaves to each
slaveholder, those twenty-five Representatives, each chosen, at most,
by only ten thousand voters, and probably by less than three-fourths
of that number, were the representatives, not only of the two
hundred and fifty thousand persons who chose them; but of _property_
which, five years ago, when slaves were lower in market, than at
present, were estimated, by the man who is now the most prominent
candidate for the Presidency, at twelve hundred millions of dollars--a
sum, which, by the natural increase of five years, and the enhanced
value resulting from a more prosperous state of the planting
interest, cannot now be less than fifteen hundred millions of dollars.
All this vast amount of property, as it is "peculiar," is also
identical in its character. In Congress, as we have seen, it is
animated by one spirit, moves in one mass, and is wielded with one
aim; and when we consider that tyranny is always timid, and despotism
distrustful, we see that this vast money power would be false to
itself, did it not direct all its eyes and hands, and put forth all
its ingenuity and energy, to one end--self-protection and
self-perpetuation. And this it has ever done. In all the vibrations
of the political scale, whether in relation to a Bank or Sub-Treasury,
Free Trade or a Tariff, this immense power has moved, and will
continue to move, in one mass, for its own protection.

While the weight of the slave influence is thus felt in the House of
Representatives, "in the Senate of the Union," says John Quincy Adams,
"the proportion of slaveholding power is still greater. By the
influence of slavery in the States where the institution is tolerated,
over their elections, no other than a slaveholder can rise to the
distinction of obtaining a seat in the Senate; and thus, of the
fifty-two members of the federal Senate, twenty-six are owners of
slaves, and are as effectually repre