It is sufficient for our purpose, if it be admitted that this principle was the law of the country at that particular time, (1776)--even though it had continued to be the law only for a year, or even a day. For if it were the law of the country even for a day, it freed every slave in the country--(if there were, as we say there were not, any legal slaves then in the country.) And the burden would then be upon the slaveholder to show that slavery had _since_ been _constitutionally_ established. And to show this, he must show an express _constitutional_ designation of the particular individuals, who have since been made slaves. Without such particular designation of the individuals to be made slaves, (and not even the present constitutions of the slave States make any such designation,) all constitutional provisions, purporting to authorize slavery, are indefinite, and uncertain in their application, and for that reason void. But again. The people of this country--in the very instrument by which they first announced their independent political existence, and first asserted their right to establish governments of their own--declared that the natural and inalienable right of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, was a "_self-evident truth_." Now, all "_self-evident truths_," except such as may be explicitly, or by necessary implication, denied, (and no government has a right to deny any of them,) enter into, are taken for granted by, and constitute an essential part of all constitutions, compacts and systems of government whatsoever.--Otherwise it would be impossible for any systematic government to be established; for it must obviously be impossible to make an actual enumeration of all the "self-evident truths," that are to be taken into account in the administration of such a government. This is more especially true of governments founded, like ours, upon contract. It is clearly impossible, in a contract of government, to enumerate all the "self-evident truths" which must be acted upon in the administration of law. And therefore they are _all_ taken for granted, unless particular ones be plainly denied.