read and dangerous agitation.

It was alleged that the original enactment being a compact of perpetual
moral obligation, its repeal constituted an odious breach of faith.

An act of Congress, while it remains unrepealed, more especially if it
be constitutionally valid in the judgment of those public functionaries
whose duty it is to pronounce on that point, is undoubtedly binding on
the conscience of each good citizen of the Republic. But in what sense
can it be asserted that the enactment in question was invested with
perpetuity and entitled to the respect of a solemn compact? Between whom
was the compact? No distinct contending powers of the Government, no
separate sections of the Union treating as such, entered into treaty
stipulations on the subject. It was a mere clause of an act of Congress,
and, like any other controverted matter of legislation, received its
final shape and was passed by compromise of the conflicting opinions or
sentiments of the members of Congress. But if it had moral authority
over men's consciences, to whom did this authority attach? Not to those
of the North, who had repeatedly refused to confirm it by extension
and who had zealously striven to establish other and incompatible
regulations upon the subject. And if, as it thus appears, the supposed
compact had no obligatory force as to the North, of course it could not
have had any as to the South, for all such compacts must be mutual and
of reciprocal obligation.

It has not unfrequently happened that lawgivers, with undue estimation
of the value of the law they give or in the view of imparting to it
peculiar strength, make it perpetual in terms; but they can not thus
bind the conscience, the judgment, and the will of those who may succeed
them, invested with similar responsibilities and clothed with equal
authority. More careful investigation may prove the law to be unsound
in principle. Experience may show it to be imperfect in detail and
impracticable in execution. And then both reason and right combine
not merely to justify but to require its repeal.

The Constitution, supreme, as it is, over all the departments of the
Government--legislative, executive, and judicial--is open to amendment
by its very terms; and Congress or the States may, in their discretion,
propose amendment to it, solemn compact though it in truth is between
the sovereign States of the Union. In the present instance a political
enactment which had ceased to have leg