If we are obliged, (as the slave argument claims we are,) to go out of the constitution of the United States to find the class whom it describes as "all other persons" than "the free," we shall, for aught I see, be equally obliged to go out of it to find those whom it describes as the "free"--for "the free," and "all other persons" than "the free," must be presumed to be found described somewhere in the same instrument. If, then, we are obliged to go out of the constitution to find the persons described in it as "the free" and "all other persons," we are obliged to go out of it to ascertain who are the persons on whom it declares that the representation of the government shall be based, and on whom, of course, the government is founded. And thus we should have the absurdity of a constitution that purports to authorize a government, yet leaves us to go in search of the people who are to be represented in it. Besides, if we are obliged to go out of the constitution, to find the persons on whom the government rests, and those persons are arbitrarily prescribed by some other instrument, independent of the constitution, this contradiction would follow, viz., that the United States government would be a subordinate government--a mere appendage to something else--a tail to some other kite--or rather a tail to a large number of kites at once--instead of being, as it declares itself to be, the supreme government--its constitution and laws being the supreme law of the land. Again. It certainly cannot be admitted that we must go out of the United States constitution to find the classes whom it describes as "the free," and "all other persons" than "the free," until it be shown that the constitution has told us where to go to find them. _In all other cases_, (without an exception, I think,) where the constitution makes any of its provisions dependent upon the state constitutions, or state legislatures, it has particularly described them as depending upon them. But it gives no intimation that it has left it with the state constitutions, or the state legislatures, to prescribe whom it means by the terms "free persons" and "all other persons," on whom it requires its own representation to be based. We have, therefore, no more authority from the constitution of the United States, for going to the state constitutions, to find the classes described in the former as the "free persons" and "all other persons," than we have for going to Turkey or Japan. We are compelled, therefore, to find them in the constitution of the United States itself, if any answering to the description can possibly be found there.