grand centre of the domestic slave trade between the states. Laws have also been made by which freemen, suspected of being fugitives from slavery, are seized and sold in the District of Columbia as slaves, unless they can prove their freedom while incarcerated in a dungeon, and this too by the judgment of a tribunal directly interested in their condemnation and sale. 5. The federal government has negociated with Great Britain and Mexico, for the surrender of fugitive slaves. 6. Florida, while a Spanish Province, was invaded, by authority of the federal government, in time of peace, for the purpose of destroying a fort of fugitive slaves. 7. Compensation for fugitive slaves who had taken refuge on board of British ships of war has been ob. tained by the federal government from Great Britain. 8. Efforts have been made by our government to recover slaves shipwrecked on Bermuda and elsewhere. 9. The American slave trade, coast-wise and over land, is prosecuted under special protection of the general government. Some of these slaves are entirely white! 10. The federal government, in its intercourse with Great Britain has manifested a settled and persevering duplicity, in regard to the suppression of the African slave trade-totally evading and declining all propo sitions for assisting in its efficient suppression. 11. It has winked at the illegal importation of African slaves. 12. It has covertly aided the colonization society, (managed by slave-holders) in its work of ridding the slave states from the troublesome presence of free people of color. 13. It has made efforts to prevent the abolition of slavery in the Island of Cuba, and even intimated its readiness to engage in a war to prevent it! 14. It has manifested a marked hostility to the government of Hayti, refusing to acknowledge its independence, though the measure was manifestly required by the commercial in terests of the country,-and it has exerted its influence at the Congress of Panama, to prevent the South American Republics from recognizing Hayti as a new state. 15. It has successfully managed to bring about a recognition of Texas, under circumstances calculated to plunge the country in a Mexican war. 16. It has put forth persevering and varied efforts to effect the annexation of Texas to the United States. 17. Florida has been purchased because it was a refuge for fugitives. 18. The Seminole war has been waged and prosecuted for the same reason.

INFERENCES.-1. That the slave power in congress is the predominating and ascendant power. 2. That its power is vigilantly and successfully exercised in the support of the slave system. 3. That in the prosecution of this work, it holds all the other interests of the country to be of minor importance. 4. That this work is carried on with little or no remonstrance or opposition on the part of the representatives and senators of the non-slave-holding states. And, of course. 5. That the liberties as well as the interests of northern freemen, so far as the action of the general government is concerned, are at the mercy of a slave power, which always holds its own interests paramount to all others.—Anti-Slavery Lecturer.

JOSHUA LEAVITT.

The ascendency of the slave-power in the councils of the nation, obtained through the ill-advised concessions of the federal constitution, and strengthened by a long series of usurpations on the one hand, and of surrenders on the other, is unjust, dangerous to the union, and incompatible with the preservation of free government; and is the principal cause of the political and financial evils under which we groan; and thus the only hope of relief is in a united determination of the friends of freedom, to employ all wise and lawful means for the extinction of slavery itself.

The first point is the fact of the ascendancy of the slave power in the general government. It controls all national appointments. No man has been or can be elected president, but a slave-holder, or a man fully approved by the slave-holders. Slave-holders have been vice-presidents since 1820; and presidents of the senate since 1800; thus securing the casting vote in the senate. Since 1822, none but a slave-holder has been speaker of the house. A majority of the supreme court are from the slave states. Every member of the cabi. net is either a slave-holder or a devoted supporter of the slave power. It controls the national_diplomacy. For six years, the chief business of our minister at London, was to urge the British government to pay for certain shipwrecked slaves, set at liberty by the old habeas corpus; and at length the sum of £25,000 was gained for the slaveholders, a sum just about equal to the expense of the mission; and this while the boundary question and other important matters were chiefly overlooked. We have now six foreign embassies engaged in looking after the interests of the tobacco planters. Slavery controls the legislation of Congress. No act has been passed, no course of legislation adopted but with the consent of the slave power. And no demand of the slave-holders has ever been successfully resisted, however injurious it might be to other interests, contrary to the constitution, hostile to the principles of liberty and justice, or derogatory to the national honor. Slavery holds the nation as a subjugated king. dom, and allows the government to exercise its functions only in strict subserviency to the will of the dominant power.

2. This ascendancy has been gained through the ill-advised concessions of the constitution, and strengthened by a series of usurpations and submissions disgraceful to the nation. Let it be borne in mind that all the concessions to slavery were purely gratuitous. Slavery had no claims to be considered. It was not an interest of the nation, it added nothing to the national wealth, the national strength, or the national honor, but is a mere damage to them all, and is in no sense entitled to be regarded as an interest, but as an enemy. For these concessions, the slave-holders rendered no equivalent. They pressed their claims, not by argument or by persuasion, but by bullying; and the constitution pacified them, as a man would pacify a highway robber who with a pistol at his breast demands his purse, and at length by a "compromise" takes up with half the amount. Our fathers never would have yielded as they did, but for the belief then generally entertained that slavery would be of tem

porary duration, and that the future tendeneies would all be in favor of liberty. The result does honor to their good feeling, rather than their wisdom. They overlooked the moral axioms, that the tolerance of sin leads to corruption, and that usurpation ever grows by submission and is never satisfied.

3. That these concessions are wholly unjust in their operation, as between the two sections of the country, may be seen from a slight examination of one of them.

THE FEDERAL RATIO.

By the constitution, the slave-holding states are allowed to be represented for three-fifths of the number of their slaves. This is an unjust law, because slaves are not in law persons in those states, they neither sustain the relations nor exercise the functions of persons, they do not possess the prerogatives nor bear the responsibilities of persons, nor contribute as persons to the common. wealth or strength, and therefore have no right to be considered as persons in the apportionment of political power. Representatives represent only people, freemen. The south has 3-8 millions of people and 100 representatives, the north 7 millions and 142 representatives. The south is only entitled to 75 representatives, and by recurring to the history of the country it will be found that these 25 representatives of slaves have in fact determined nearly every im portant question of the government. Look at the bearing of this on particular states.

Pennsylvania has 937,877 free inhabitants, and 19 representatives. Virginia has nearly 200,000 less, and 21 representatives, when she is only entitled to 16. This is a specimen.

The representation in the senate was originally equal, but is now greatly changed. The senate was divided between the north and south (Delaware then being always reckoned with the north until 1819) thus

1789 North, 16 Senators, representing each,.
South, 10

123,000

66

66

66

125,000

The admission of Louisiana, in 1812, and the going over of Dela. ware to slavery, produced this tie, of which the Missouri compromise was the first fruits-the full harvest of infamy and woe is yet to be reaped.

The electoral vote for president is composed of both these ratios, and combines the injustice of both. Pennsylvania has 30 votes for president; the six states, of S. Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky, with a free population nearly 200,000 less, has 52 votes. Their number, in proportion to their free population, would be 26, or just one-half. Had the division of the states remained as it was when the constitution was adopted, and had the increase in the proportionate number of the free and slave

states kept pace with the increase of free population, the free stator would now have 36 senators instead of 26; and were a right apportionment made, the electoral vote would stand 178 N. to 101 S. instead of 168 to 126. The 45 electoral votes gratuitously conceded to slavery, are enough to govern all elections, by being judiciously employed in balancing the parties of the north, so as to keep them all in subserviency to the slave interest, whenever that comes in com petition with the interest of the country.

Ohio, with 202,453 votes, has 21 electors; while Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina. Alabama and Mississippi, with 211,939 voters, have 76 electors. Massachusetts, with 74,594 votes, has 14 electors; North Carolina and Alabama, with 74,000 votes, have 22 electors; and Virginia and South Carolina, with 83,000 votes, have 34.

In the distribution of the surplus revenue, in 1837, the slave states managed to get the electoral ratio established as the rule of apportionment. In consequence, six of the slave states, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky, becaine entitled to $6,754,588; while Pennsylvania, with a population of nearly 200,000 more, had only $3,823,358. New-Jersey received $3,20 to each free person, Georgia $4.80, South Carolina $5.27, Louisiana $6, and Massachusetts two dollars and ninety-two cents. 4. It is easy to show that this element of our political institutions is both dangerous to the union and incompatible with a free government. The possession of unjust and irresponsible power always intoxicates, and those who hold it become infatuated, and extend their encroachments in an increased ratio, until they become intolerable, and drive the oppressed to revolution. Such is the history of the past. Such is the career now running by the slave-power in this country. Its gags, its post-office restrictions, its political intolerance, its interference with every political and financial interest, will, if not checked by constitutional means, drive the people of the north to a revolution, for which the responsibility will chiefly rest upon such northern statesmen as [Proffit,] Van Buren, Webster, Buchanan, &c. who vie with each other in efforts to bind the north at the chariot wheels of the slave-power.

5. Time fails, to illustrate, in detail, the extent to which slavery is the cause of our political and financial evils. In politics, it embarrasses all our diplomacy with foreign nations. It sacrifices the national honor. How it looks, to see a government professedly free chiefly occupied in securing and extending the interests of slavery! It binds us helpless and trembling at the feet of the nation with which we are chiefly in contact. It enslaves the public press, that old "palladium of liberty." It controls public offices. It inflames parties at the north, so that its pendulum power can be employed to keep them vieing with each other in self-degradation and servility.The Emancipator.

us.

ELIZUR WRIGHT, JUN.

Friends and fellow laborers, the enemy now stands openly before His foot is on the neck, of 2,500,000 of our fellow-men. He asserts his right to maintain his position, and to increase the number of his victims. He begs no longer any favors from the circumstances of the case, he talks no more about a hard necessity: he boldly avows slavery to be the best condition of the laborer, without qualification of color or clime. He madly threatens more closely to shut out the light of eternal life from the imprisoned soul, as if the dark and fanatical mixture of christianity and heathenism, under an even increasing load of stripes and chains, were less likely to breed insurrection and servile war than the kind influences of free and genuine chris tianity combined with the mild and equitable government of law! Such is the enemy that we find rampant amidst our free institutions defended on all sides by fortifications built out of our flattery or neglect. Is there a man that loves his country or his race who will not now take the side of freedom? Is there a woman? Is there a child? The work is plain. Let abolitionists plant in every free breast a holy horror of the sin of slavery, by exposing in the light of truth its nature and tendencies. This will cut off the supply of enterprise and talent and sanctity that has yearly flowed to the south to prop up the unhallowed system. It will purify the church; it will abolitionize southern travellers and residents in the north instead of permitting them to diffuse the power of slavery among us. It will lay slave-holders under an embargo, surround them, as the moral invalids of the universe, with a cordon sanitaire. It will confine the contagion to the spot of its origin, as the pest house of human na ture. Who can doubt, with such treatment a speedy recovery' Let the abolitionists see to it that the rights of humanity, and the high privileges of our country are secured to our colored brethren who are free. Let them smile upon their laudable endeavors to elevate themselves, and wash off the marks of the degrading chain and scourge. Let them trample on the cord of caste and dare to treat men according to their deserts and not according to the mean and guilty prejudices of an oppressive nation. Let them throw open to deserving colored youth-the mechanic's shop, the farm, the counting house and the halls of education. Of what use is freedom if it does not open the door to manhood?

Let it be remembered that the practicability and safety of our advice to the slave-holders is no longer a matter of question. They said to us, let us wait and see the result of the emancipation of 800,000 British slaves. Well, we have seen the result, and it verifies all our predictions,-if those may be called predictions, which are but the plainest teachings of common sense.

Is there a rational hope of putting a peaceful end to slavery by any other means than a thorough change of public opinion? If not we call upon all who love their country, their fellow men, and their God to join us. If we have failed in energy, if we have lacked wisdom, if there are men who are ready to carry this cause onward faster and further than we have done, let them come forward and give their country the benefit of their superior powers.