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This was to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause 2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order to carry out the constitutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property.
That does not of course mean that the legislator must be acquainted with all those for whom he legislates any more than that we can directly experience the facts of history which we claim to know. But every rule in knowledge, in morality, in law must be referable to this test of intercourse.
This is the law that the legislator has to frame, and therefore he ought to have expert knowledge of the genius of the people for whom he legislates. He must understand both those tendencies which will resist and those which will welcome him. He must know how far he can go unopposed and how much he can venture without forfeiting his authority.
No doubt the sensuous shows him nothing that has its foundation in itself, and that legislates for itself, but it shows him something that does not care for foundation or law; therefore, thus not being able to quiet the intelligence by showing it a final cause, he reduces it to silence by the conception which desires no cause; and being incapable of understanding the sublime necessity of reason, he keeps to the blind constraint of matter.
It is a cluster of some thirty-seven States, each with its own legislature, for all which, and for the outlying territories, the Federal Parliament also legislates. Contrast their condition with ours. Only of late has their population outrun ours. They have thirty-eight legislative systems: we have one only. Surely our system is a barbarous simplicity. France ... goes beyond us.
This then is the other half, without which she would be where we are: France legislates to keep her wealth in her own country and her loss on that canal is only one plum out of her heeping bushel. The foreign sapper and miner does no work on French soil.
It solemnly legislates that one British plough may be imported; and graciously permits its subjects, in a land where there are no mechanics, to make as many additional ploughs as they need. Is it not peculiarly modest in these men, who show so little wisdom in temporal matters, to ask the entire world to surrender its belief to them in things spiritual and divine?
Congress therefore in accepting such a constitution from a new State, where slavery had not before existed, as effectually legislates slavery into such State as if a special Congressional act were passed for that purpose. Consistency then, with the Chicago platform would seem to require, that Congress should refuse, for want of constitutional power, to admit any State with a slavery constitution.
Hence follows the third practical principle of the Will, as supreme condition of its agreement with universal practical Reason the idea of the Will of every rational being as a Will that legislates universally. The Will, if subject to law, has first itself imposed it.
At this moment one of these gentlemen to whom I have referred, then President of the Board of Control, Governor of India, author, as he told a committee on which I sat, of the Affghan war, is now decorated with a Norman title for our masters even after a lapse of eight hundred years ape the Norman style sits in the House of Peers, and legislates for you, having neglected in regard to India every great duty which appertained to his high office; and to show that it is not only cabinets and monarchs who thus distribute honours and rewards, the President of that Commercial Association through whose instigation that letter was written is now one of the representatives of Manchester, the great centre of that manufacture whose very foundation is now crumbling into ruin.
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