“ARTICLE --. Everywhere within the limits of the United States, and of each State or Territory thereof, all persons are equal before the law, so that no person can hold another as a slave.” Mr. Sumner moved the reference of the joint resolution containing his Amendment to the Select Committee on Slavery and Freedmen, of which he was Chairman. Mr. Trumbull thought it had better go to the Committee on the Judiciary, to which the other proposition had been referred. Mr. Sumner remarked, that already petitions against the Fugitive Slave Act had been reported from the Committee on the Judiciary with the recommendation that they be referred to the other Committee, that the terms of the resolution raising this Committee were broad enough to cover every proposition relating to Slavery, and that, in fact, petitions relating to a Constitutional Amendment had already been referred to this Committee. If after this statement the Senator desired that the joint resolution should be referred to the Committee of which he was the honored head, Mr. Sumner consented with the greatest pleasure. Mr. Trumbull expressed the opinion that “the appropriate Committee for all propositions to change the Constitution was the Judiciary Committee,” and in this opinion Mr. Doolittle concurred. Mr. Sumner was perfectly willing to follow the suggestion made. His chief desire was that the Committee would “act upon it soon.” Meanwhile Mr. Saulsbury, of Delaware, moved that the joint resolution be indefinitely postponed, which was lost,--Yeas 8, Nays 31. It was then referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. February 10th, Mr. Trumbull reported back the two joint resolutions, and the various petitions on the subject, with a substitute, as an amendment to the joint resolution of Mr. Henderson, in the following terms:-- “SECTION 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. SECTION 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” February 17th, Mr. Sumner, inferring from the report of the Committee a disposition to follow the Ordinance for the Northwest Territory, and also thinking it desirable to expel from the Constitution clauses alleged to concern Slavery, gave notice of the following substitute, the first clause of which is modelled precisely on the famous prohibition in the Ordinance. “ARTICLE 13.