The portion of it in question was not designed for the wide application which is sought to be made of it, nor is it capable of that application. The intention of it was to assert the right of the people, on whose part the declaration was made, to equality under the law with all other British subjects, and to maintain their right to set up a new government for themselves, when the one under which they had been living had been perverted to their oppression. If it was intended to assert the absolute equality of all men, it was false in principle and in fact. Taken in its literal sense, it might be construed to mean that all men are created equal in every respect, but does any one believe, or will any one ever believe, that the native Congo, the Hottentot or the Australian negro, is the equal, mentally, physically and morally, of the Caucasian? Whatever construction the words quoted and those following them may admit of, let it be borne in mind, that they belong to the argument and not to the fact. The separation and independence were asserted by the resolution adopted on the 2d of July, and not by the declaration adopted on the 4th, and the latter was no more a part of what was authoritatively established, than the _obitur dictum_ of a judge is a part of his decision. The truth is, that several of the statesmen of the South and especially of Virginia, deplored slavery as an evil and expressed the hope that at some future time, in some way that might be desired, the institution might be abolished in such manner as to secure the welfare of both races, but none of them could suggest any mode for doing so, and though perfectly sincere, they contented themselves with expressing the hope that the way might be discovered. Slavery was a fixed fact, fastened upon the colonies by the mother country, and in the South, the slaves bore such a proportion to the white population and the whole business of the country was so identified with their labor, that it was impossible to emancipate them, without entailing on both races evils far greater than those supposed to result from the existence of slavery itself. It was a practical question with which the statesmen of the country had to deal as practical men, and all they could do, was to allow the system to remain, as the best for all parties under the circumstances, without reverting to the dangerous experiment of the ideal schemes of a false philanthropy. As to the slave trade, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland had already put an end to it as soon as they were vested with the power to do so, and North Carolina followed suit very shortly after the adoption of the Constitution, and the prohibition would probably have been made general, but for the combination of the New England states with the two southern states that were in favor of having the trade continued.