_actors_ only are different. In the one case, ignorant and degraded--goaded by the memory of the past, stung by the present, and driven to desperation by the fearful looking for of wrongs for ever to come. In the other, enlightened into the nature of _rights_, the principles of justice, and the dictates of the law of love, unprovoked by wrongs, with cool deliberation, and by system, they perpetrate these acts upon those to whom they owe unnumbered obligations for _whole lives_ of unrequited service. On which side may palliation be pleaded, and which party may most reasonably claim an abatement of the rigors of law? If Congress has power to suppress such acts _at all_, it has power to suppress them _in_ all. It has been shown already that _allegiance_ is exacted of the slave. Is the government of the United States unable to grant _protection_ where it exacts _allegiance_? It is an axiom of the civilized world, and a maxim even with savages, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal and correlative. Are principles powerless with us which exact homage of barbarians? _Protection is the_ CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT _of every human. being under the exclusive legislation of Congress who has not forfeited it by crime_. In conclusion, I argue the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District, from Art. 1, sec. 8, clause 1, of the constitution; "Congress shall have power to provide for the common defence and the general welfare of the United States." Has the government of the United States no power under this grant to legislate within its own exclusive jurisdiction on subjects that vitally affect its interest? Suppose the slaves in the district should rise upon their masters, and the United States' government, in quelling the insurrection, should kill any number of them. Could their masters claim compensation of the government? Manifestly not; even though no proof existed that the particular slaves killed were insurgents. This was precisely the point at issue between those masters, whose slaves were killed by the State troops at the time of the Southampton insurrection, and the Virginia Legislature: no evidence was brought to show that the slaves killed by the troops were insurgents; yet the Virginia Legislature decided that their masters were _not entitled to compensation._ They proceeded on the sound principle, that the government may in self-protection destroy the claim of its subjects even to that which has been recognized as property by its own acts. If in providing for the common defence, the United States' government, in the case supposed, would have power to destroy slaves both as _property_ and _persons_, it surely might stop _half-way_, destroy them _as property_ while it legalized their existence as _persons_, and thus provided for the common defence by giving them a personal and powerful interest in the government, and securing their strength for its defence.