As Slavery assumes to be national, so, by an equally strange perversion, Freedom is degraded to be sectional, and all who uphold it, under the National Constitution, are made to share this same epithet. Honest efforts to secure its blessings everywhere within the jurisdiction of Congress are scouted as sectional; and this cause, which the founders of our National Government had so much at heart, is called _Sectionalism_. These terms, now belonging to the commonplaces of political speech, are adopted and misapplied by most persons without reflection. But here is the power of Slavery. According to a curious tradition of the French language, Louis the Fourteenth, the Grand Monarch, by an accidental error of speech, among supple courtiers, changed the gender of a noun. But Slavery does more. It changes word for word. It teaches men to say _national_ instead of _sectional_, and _sectional_ instead of _national_. Slavery national! Sir, this is a mistake and absurdity, fit to have a place in some new collection of Vulgar Errors, by some other Sir Thomas Browne, with the ancient, but exploded stories, that the toad has a gem in its head, and that ostriches digest iron. According to the true spirit of the Constitution, and the sentiments of the Fathers, _Slavery_, and not Freedom, is _sectional_, while _Freedom_, and not Slavery, is _national_. On this unanswerable proposition I take my stand, and here commences my argument. The subject presents itself under two principal heads: first, _the true relations of the National Government to Slavery_, wherein it will appear that there is no national fountain from which Slavery can be derived, and no national power, under the Constitution, by which it can be supported. Enlightened by this general survey, we shall be prepared to consider, secondly, _the true nature of the provision for the rendition of fugitives from service_, and herein especially the unconstitutional and offensive legislation of Congress in pursuance thereof. I. And now for THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT TO SLAVERY. These are readily apparent, if we do not neglect well-established principles.