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Page 33
* * * * *
"Here is the law; and under it exists the law of slavery in the
different States. By virtue of this very principle it cannot extend
one inch beyond its own territorial limits. A State cannot regulate
the relation of master and slave, of owner and property, the manner and
title of descent, or anything else, one inch beyond its territory. Then
you cannot, by virtue of the law of slavery, if it makes slaves property
in a State, if you please, move that property out of the State. It ends
whenever you pass from that State. You may pass into another State that
has a like law; and if you do, you hold it by virtue of that law; but
the moment you pass beyond the limits of the slaveholding States, all
title to the property called property in slaves, there ends. Under such
a law slaves cannot be carried as property into the Territories, or
anywhere else beyond the States authorizing it. It is not property
anywhere else. If the Constitution of the United States gives any other
and further character than this to slave property, let us acknowledge it
fairly and end all strife about it. If it does not, I ask in all candor,
that men on the other side shall say so, and let this point be
settled. What is the point we are to inquire into? It is this: does
the Constitution of the United States make slaves property beyond the
jurisdiction of the States authorizing slavery? If it only acknowledges
them as property within that jurisdiction, it has not extended the
property one inch beyond the State line; but if, as the Supreme Court
seems to say, it does recognize and protect them as property further
than State limits, and more than the State laws do, then, indeed, it
becomes like other property. The Supreme Court rests this claim upon
this clause of the Constitution: 'No person held to service or labor in
one State, under the laws thereof, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall
be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may
be due.' Now the question is, does that guaranty it? Does that make
it the same as other property? The very fact that this clause makes
provision on the subject of persons bound to service, shows that the
framers of the Constitution did not regard it as other property. It
was a thing that needed some provision; other property did not. The
insertion of such a provision shows that it was not regarded as other
property. If a man's horse stray from Delaware into Pennsylvania, he can
go and get it. Is there any provision in the Constitution for it? No.
How came this to be there, if a slave is property? If it is the same as
other property, why have any provision about it?'"
It will undoubtedly have struck any person, in hearing this passage read
from the speech of the Senator from Vermont, whom I regret not to see
in his seat to-day, that the whole argument, ingeniously as it is put,
rests upon this fallacy--if I may say so with due respect to him--that
a man cannot have title in property wherever the law does not give him
a remedy or process for the assertion of his title; or, in other words,
his whole argument rests upon the old confusion of ideas which considers
a man's right and his remedy to be one and the same thing. I have
already shown to you, by the passages I have cited from the opinions of
Lord Stowell and of Judge Story, how they regard this subject. They say
that the slave who goes to England, or goes to Massachusetts, from a
slave State, is still a slave, that he is still his master's property;
but that his master has lost control over him, not by reason of the
cessation of his property, but because those States grant no remedy to
the master by which he can exercise his control.
There are numerous illustrations upon this point--illustrations
furnished by the copyright laws, illustrations furnished by patent laws.
Let us take a case, one that appeals to us all. There lives now a man
in England who from time to time sings to the enchanted ear of the
civilized world strains of such melody that the charmed senses seem to
abandon the grosser regions of earth, and to rise to purer and serener
regions above. God has created that man a poet. His inspiration is his;
his songs are his by right divine; they are his property so recognized
by human law; yet here in these United States men steal Tennyson's works
and sell his property for their profit; and this because, in spite of
the violated conscience of the nation, we refuse to give him protection
for his property. Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species
of property there recognized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the
inventive genius of our brethren of the North is a source of vast wealth
to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one of
the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents
now before us in this Capital for renewal, was $40,000,000. I cannot
believe that the entire capital, invested in inventions of this
character in the United States can fall short of one hundred and fifty
or two hundred million dollars. On what protection does this vast
property rest? Just upon that same constitutional protection which gives
a remedy to the slave owner when his property is, also found outside of
the limits of the State in which he lives.
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