been carried out. So long as the foreign traffic in slaves was made lawful to any of the States, slavery was nationalized. American slave ships, engaged in a lawful commerce, and bearing the national flag, would be as much entitled to national protection as any other of the American mercantile marine. Permission of the African slave trade was essentially intervention in favor of slavery, and the right to prohibit it, and the exercise of that right, in no wise conflict with the principle of non-interference with it within the States. There are but four provisions of the Constitution wherein the subject of slavery is alluded to, viz: Art. 1, sec. 2; art. 1, sec. 9; art. 4, sec. 2; and art. 5. It is plain from these provisions-- 1st--That the slaveholding States are entitled under the Constitution to representation in the national legislature upon three-fifths of their slaves, so long as slavery exists in those States; and they are subject to direct taxation accordingly. 2d--That the right under State laws to import slaves into _the then existing_ States, was guaranteed for twenty years, or until 1808, and the guarded concession of the right involved the converse, that after 1808 the foreign slave trade was to be prohibited by Congress, for the reason already assigned, and any attempt by Congress now to open the African slave trade, would be as direct a moral violation of this compromise of the Constitution as if the Congress were to attempt directly to abolish slavery in any State. 3d--It is equally plain that the right of slave owners to recover fugitive slaves, escaping from the State where they are held, _under the laws thereof_, into another, is guaranteed. The Federal Constitution so far as relates to the subject of slavery within the United States, involves the three propositions stated and nothing more, and there is nothing in these in the least degree expressing or implying a right in Congress to abolish or establish slavery in any State or territory of the Union. On the contrary, the whole tenor of the Constitution is, slavery is the creation of _local law_, and Congress is to let it alone. Now as to the question of slavery in the territories and the power and policy of the Federal government concerning it there.