Thus you perceive how unequal is the race in which you are contending. Fifty years have given the North an increased preponderance of about four and a half millions of free citizens. Another fifty years will increase this preponderance in a vastly augmented ratio. And now we ask you, why this downward course? Why this continually increasing disparity between you and your Northern brethren? Is it because the interests of the slaveholders are not represented in the national councils? Let us see. We have already shown you that your _free_ population is only 49 per cent. of that of the Northern States; that is, the inhabitants of the free States are more than _double_ the free inhabitants of the slave States. Now, what is the proportion of members of Congress from the two sections? In the Senate, the slave States have precisely as many as the free; and in the lower House, their members are 65 per cent. of those from the free States.[13] [13] 135 from the free and 88 members from the slave States. According to _free_ population, the South would have only 66 members. The Senate has a veto on every law; and as one half of that body are slaveholders, it follows, of course, that no law can be passed without their consent. Nor has any bill passed the Senate, since the organization of the government, but by the votes of slaveholders. It is idle, therefore, for them to impute their depressed condition to unjust and partial legislation, since they have from the very first controlled the action of Congress. Not a law has been passed, not a treaty ratified, but by their votes. Nor is this all. Appointments under the federal government are made by the President, with the consent of the Senate, and of course the slaveholders have, and always have had, a veto on every appointment. There is not an officer of the federal government to whose appointment slaveholding members of the Senate have not consented. Yet all this gives but an inadequate idea of the political influence exercised by the _people_ of the slave States in the election of President, and consequently over the policy of his administration. In consequence of the peculiar apportionment of Presidential Electors among the States, and the operation of the rule of _federal numbers_--whereby, for the purpose of estimating the representative population, five slaves are counted as three white men--most extraordinary results are exhibited at every election of President. In the election of 1848, the Electors chosen were 290: of these 169 were from the free, and 121 from the slave States. The popular vote in the free States was 2,029,551 or one elector to 12,007 voters. The popular vote in the slave States was 845,050 or one elector to 7,545 voters.[14] [14] South Carolina had 9 electors, chosen by the Legislature. These are deducted in the calculation.