"I never entertained a doubt that the principal, I will not say the only, objects that the framers of the Constitution contemplated, as falling within the rule of apportionment, were a capitation-tax and a tax on land. Local considerations, and the particular circumstances and relative situation of the States, naturally lead to this view of the subject. _The provision was made in favor of the Southern States._ They possessed a large number of _slaves_; they had extensive tracts of territory, thinly settled, and not very productive. A majority of the States had but few _slaves_; and several of them, a limited territory, well-settled, and in a high state of cultivation. The Southern States, if no provision had been introduced in the Constitution, would have been wholly at the mercy of the other States. _Congress, in such case, might tax slaves at discretion or arbitrarily_, and land in every part of the Union. After the same rate or measure, so much a head in the first instance, and so much an acre in the second. _To guard them against imposition in these particulars was the reason of introducing the clause in the Constitution_ which directs that representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the States, according to their respective numbers." Page 178: "The rule of apportionment is of this nature: it is radically wrong; it cannot be supported by any solid reasoning. Why should slaves, who are a species of property, be represented more than any other property? The rule, therefore, ought not to be extended by construction." PERMISSION OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE. (Const. Art. 1, sec. 9.) In the great case of Gibbons _vs._ Ogden, 9 Wheaton's Reports, pp. 206 and 207 (1824), Chief Justice Marshall, delivering the opinion of the supreme court, makes use of the following language:-- "The Act passed in 1803 (Act Const. 1803, c. 63), prohibiting the importation of slaves into any State which shall itself prohibit their importation, implies, it is said, an admission that the States possess the power to exclude or admit them; from which it is inferred, that they possess the same power with respect to other articles.