No one, I suppose, doubts that if the state governments were to abolish slavery, the slaves would then, without further legislation, become citizens of the United States. Yet, in reality, if they would become citizens then, they are equally citizens now--else it would follow that the state governments had an arbitrary power of making citizens of the United States; or--what is equally absurd--it would follow that disabilities, arbitrarily imposed by the state governments, upon native inhabitants of the country, were, of themselves, sufficient to deprive such inhabitants of their citizenship, which would otherwise have been conferred upon them by the constitution of the United States. To suppose that the state governments are thus able, arbitrarily, to keep in abeyance, or arbitrarily to withhold from any of the inhabitants of the country, any of the benefits or rights which the national constitution intended to confer upon them, would be to suppose that the state constitutions were paramount to the national one. The conclusion, therefore, is inevitable, that the state governments have no power to withhold the rights of citizenship from any who are otherwise competent to become citizens. And as all the native born inhabitants of the country are at least competent to become citizens of the United States, (if they are not already such,) the state governments have no power, by slave laws or any other, to withhold the rights of citizenship from them. But however clear it may be, that the constitution, in reality, made citizens of all "the people of the United States," yet it is not necessary to maintain that point, in order to prove that the constitution gave no guaranty or sanction to slavery--for if it had not already given citizenship to all, it nevertheless gave to the government of the United States unlimited power of offering citizenship to all. The power given to the government of passing naturalization laws, is entirely unrestricted, except that the laws must be uniform throughout the country. And the government have undoubted power to offer naturalization and citizenship to every person in the country, whether foreigner or native, who is not already a citizen. To suppose that we have in the country three millions of native born inhabitants, not citizens, and whom the national government has no power to make citizens, when its power of naturalization is entirely unrestricted, is a palpable contradiction. But further. The constitution of the United States must be made consistent with itself throughout; and if any of its parts are irreconcilable with each other, those parts that are inconsistent with liberty, justice and right, must be thrown out for inconsistency. Besides the provisions already mentioned, there are numerous others, in the constitution of the United States, that are entirely and irreconcilably inconsistent with the idea that there either was, or could be, any constitutional slavery in this country.