On the other hand, we are to consider what has been gained to humanity by the establishment of the Constitution. The extinction of the slave-trade, followed by a public opinion with reference to it that is as strong and reliable in the Southern as in the Northern States, was purchased at a price by no means unreasonable, when compared with the magnitude of the acquisition. The great prosperity and high civilization which are due to the commercial power of the Constitution have been a vast benefit to both races;--to the whites by the superior refinement they have created, and to the blacks by the gradual but certain amelioration of their condition. The social strength and security occasioned by constantly increasing wealth, combined with the acknowledgment and establishment of the doctrine which makes every State the uncontrolled arbiter of the domestic condition of its inhabitants, has put it in the power of those who have charge of the negro to deal prudently and wisely with their great problem, without the interference of those who could benefit neither race by their intervention. This, in every rational view of the subject, cannot but be regarded as one of the chief blessings conferred by the Constitution of the United States. It has made emancipation possible, where otherwise it would have been impossible, or where it could have been obtained only through the horrors of both servile and civil war. It has enabled local authorities to adapt changes to local circumstances. Its beneficent influences may be traced in the laws of the States, in the records of their jurisprudence, and in the advanced and advancing condition of their public sentiment; and he who should follow those influences in all their details, and count the sum of what it has effected for the moral and physical well-being of the subjected race, would find cause for devout gratitude to the Ruler of the Universe. Great as has been the increase of slaves in the United States during the last seventy years, there can be no question that the general improvement of their condition has been equally great, and that it has kept pace with the increasing prosperity of the country. That prosperity has enabled individual enterprise and benevolence to plant a colony upon the coast of Africa, which, after centuries of discipline and education, may yet be the means of restoring to its native soil, as civilized and Christian men, a race that came to us as heathens and barbarians.