Of course this solemn act unanimously voted for by the members of the congress, Stephens being one of them, counts incalculably more in weight to prove that predominant southern sentiment was against reopening the African slave-trade, than the counter evidence just stated. Likewise all that Washington, Jefferson, and other of their contemporaries may have done or said against slavery is outweighed by the contemporary pro-slavery legislation and measures dictated by the south. It is very probable that during the time we are now contemplating anti-slavery men were really as few in the south as union men were after the first blood spilled in the brothers' war. Recall the three compromises between north and south, mentioned above, by which the union was formed, and you will understand that the fathers were preaching but to stones when they impugned slavery. And at this point meditate the language of Madison in the historic convention, which shows that he saw accurately even then the permanence of slavery, and the unequivocal geographical division it had made. He was discussing the apprehension of the small States, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island, that under the union proposed they would be absorbed by the larger adjacent States. He affirmed there was no such danger; and that the only danger arose from the antagonism between the slave and the non-slave sections. To avert this danger he proposed to arm north and south each with defensive power against the other by conceding to the former the superiority it would get in one branch of the federal legislature by reason of its greater population if the members thereof came in equal numbers from every State, large or small, and at the same time giving the south superiority in the other branch by allowing it increased representation therein for all its slaves counted as free inhabitants. This prepares you for the language which we now give from the report, and which we would have you meditate: