According to the census of 1830, and the ratio of representation based upon that, slave property added twenty-five members to the House of Representatives. And as it has been estimated, (as an approximation to the truth,) that the two and a half million slaves in the United States are held as property by about two hundred and fifty thousand persons--giving an average of ten slaves to each slaveholder, those twenty-five Representatives, each chosen, at most, by only ten thousand voters, and probably by less than three-fourths of that number, were the representatives, not only of the two hundred and fifty thousand persons who chose them; but of _property_ which, five years ago, when slaves were lower in market, than at present, were estimated, by the man who is now the most prominent candidate for the Presidency, at twelve hundred millions of dollars--a sum, which, by the natural increase of five years, and the enhanced value resulting from a more prosperous state of the planting interest, cannot now be less than fifteen hundred millions of dollars. All this vast amount of property, as it is "peculiar," is also identical in its character. In Congress, as we have seen, it is animated by one spirit, moves in one mass, and is wielded with one aim; and when we consider that tyranny is always timid, and despotism distrustful, we see that this vast money power would be false to itself, did it not direct all its eyes and hands, and put forth all its ingenuity and energy, to one end--self-protection and self-perpetuation. And this it has ever done. In all the vibrations of the political scale, whether in relation to a Bank or Sub-Treasury, Free Trade or a Tariff, this immense power has moved, and will continue to move, in one mass, for its own protection. While the weight of the slave influence is thus felt in the House of Representatives, "in the Senate of the Union," says John Quincy Adams, "the proportion of slaveholding power is still greater. By the influence of slavery in the States where the institution is tolerated, over their elections, no other than a slaveholder can rise to the distinction of obtaining a seat in the Senate; and thus, of the fifty-two members of the federal Senate, twenty-six are owners of slaves, and are as effectually representatives of that interest, as the eighty-eight members elected by them to the House." The dominant power which the Constitution gives to the slave interest, as thus seen and exercised in the _Legislative Halls_ of our nation, is equally obvious and obtrusive in every other department of the National government.