The Judge replied that the
Constitution requires the suppression of the foreign slave trade, but
does not require the prohibition of slavery in the Territories. That is a
mistake in point of fact. The Constitution does not require the action of
Congress in either case, and it does authorize it in both. And so there
is still no difference between the cases.
In regard to what I have said of the advantage the slave States have over
the free in the matter of representation, the Judge replied that we in
the free States count five free negroes as five white people, while in
the slave States they count five slaves as three whites only; and that
the advantage, at last, was on the side of the free States.
Now, in the slave States they count free negroes just as we do; and it so
happens that, besides their slaves, they have as many free negroes as we
have, and thirty thousand over. Thus, their free negroes more than
balance ours; and their advantage over us, in consequence of their
slaves, still remains as I stated it.
In reply to my argument that the compromise measures of 1850 were a
system of equivalents, and that the provisions of no one of them could
fairly be carried to other subjects without its corresponding equivalent
being carried with it, the Judge denied outright that these measures had
any connection with or dependence upon each other.
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