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Selections: What Can The Liberty Party Do?

Selections: What Can The Liberty Party Do? image
Parent Issue
Day
8
Month
April
Year
1844
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

DEMOCRATS! You profess to be ppposed to monopolies and to property representaron. Do you know that one of the heaviest monopolies in the country is the property in slaves, estimated by Henry Clay, some years since, at twclve hundred millions of dollars; and do you know, further, that this species of property is, under the Constitution, represented in Congressgiving the South about twenty-three members in the House of Representatives, and twenty-three Presidential electors, in addilion to the fair and equal represntation and electoral votes of the free inhabitants, nnd giving to slaveholders a power which has enabled them to control the action of the Federal Government, in every departmeiif, and toe.xtend and strengthen, in the face of the Constitution, the institution of Slavery at the expense of the interests and honor of the North, as well as of the whole country?Wel!, but, (say yon) this isa Conslilutional stipulation, and how is it to be changed? Not by moral suasion, certainly, for we apprehend it would be a useless expenditure of time, to endeavor to induce slaveholders voluntarily to give up this tremendous monopoly of political power, as much as it would have been to persuade the offioers of the U. S. Bank voluntarily to relinquish thcir charlered privileges and power, How, tben, is theremoval of this odious feature of the Constitution to be effected? In noother way than by politica] action. Yes, but it will take a vote of threc-fourths of the States to amend the Constitutionr and as onehalf of the members of theConfederacy, are slave States, anddirectly interested in the preservation of this provisión, there is no probabiliiy of accomplishing the object in this way? Do-you fcnow that seven of the thirteen slave States have been admitted into the Union, in direct violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution; and that Congress ha.mgmade these slave States, has, in the language of a southern man, (C. M. Cla}-, of Ky.,) a right to unmalce them? There cannol be a question on this point, as any one who will take the trouble to investigate, must be sahsfied. Congress kas the power to abolish slavery in all the slave States which did not íprm a part pf the original confederacy, and to which this "domestic institutionr? was nöf secared by Constitutional comprómise- 'and by exercising this authority, the number of free States will be increased to twenty, leaving but six slave States Here, then, is more than the Constitutional majority requisita to effect the proposed arrangement. And sliould it not - can it not be done? Yom$s better judgment and principie respond, "yes.'r

Article

Subjects
Signal of Liberty
Old News