67
and ed,
that this would be the case in any territory newly acquirby purchase or by war, as of Mexico on the South or Can-
ada on the North. And here I begin by the remark, that as the assumption of constitutional law is inspired by the assumption of fact with regard to the " ennobling " character of Slavery, so it must lose
much to
be
if
not
all
false, as
When are few
of
its
force
when
the latter assumption
is
shown
has been done to-day.
Slavery
is
who would
seen to be the Barbarism which
not cover
it
from
sight, rather
it is,
there
than
insist
upon sending it abroad with the flag of the Republic. It is only because people have been insensible to its true character that they have tolerated for a moment its exorbitant pretensions. Therefore this long exposition, where Slavery has been made to stand forth in its five-fold Barbarism, with the single object of compelling
way
men
to
This assumption the Constitution,
naturally prepares the
and
may
be described as an attempt to Africanize into it the barbarous Law of
by introducing
Slavery, derived as rica
work without wages,
to consider the assumption of constitutional law.
we have
to Africanize the Territories,
ernment.
seen originally from barbarous Af-
then, through such Africanization of the Constitution,
In using
this
and
to Africanize the National
language to express the obvious
of this assumption, I borrow a suggestive term,
by a Portuguese
first
employed
writer at the beginning of this century,
protesting against the spread of Slavery in Brazil.
Goveffect
when
(See Roster's
Analyze the assumption, and ii. p. 248.) found to stand on two pretensions, either of which These two are first, the Afthe assumption fails also.
Travels in Brazil, vol. it
will be
failing,
—
rican pretension of property in sion that such property
With regard to
the
is
first
man
and, secondly, the preten-
recognized in the Constitution. of these pretensions, I might simply
what I have already said at an earlier stage of this argument. But I should do injustice to the part it has been made refer to
to play in this controversy, if I did not again expose I sought particularly to
show
its
Barbarism
now
it.
I shall
Then show
something more. Property implies an owner .and a thing owned. On the one But the side is a human being, and on the other side a thing. very idea of a human being necessarily excludes the idea of pro-
