Among these provisions are the following: _First._ Congress have power to lay a capitation or poll tax upon the people of the country. Upon whom shall this tax be levied? and who must be held responsible for its payment? Suppose a poll tax were laid upon a man, whom the state laws should pretend to call a slave. Are the United States under the necessity of investigating, or taking any notice of the fact of slavery, either for the purpose of excusing the man himself from the tax, or of throwing it upon the person claiming to be his owner? Must the government of the United States find a man's pretended owner, or only the man himself, before they can tax him? Clearly the United States are not bound to tax any one but the individual himself, or to hold any other person responsible for the tax. Any other principle would enable the state governments to defeat any tax of this kind levied by the United States. Yet a man's liability to be held personally responsible for the payment of a tax, levied upon himself by the government of the United States, is inconsistent with the idea that the government is bound to recognize him as not having the ownership of his own person. _Second._ "The congress shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes." This power is held, by the supreme court of the United States, to be an exclusive one in the general government; and it obviously must be so, to be effectual--for if the states could also interfere to regulate it, the states could at pleasure defeat the regulations of congress. Congress, then, having the exclusive power of regulating this commerce, they only (if any body) can say who may, and who may not, carry it on; and probably even they have no power to discriminate arbitrarily between individuals.--But, in no event, have the _state_ governments any right to say who may, or who may not, carry on "commerce with foreign nations," or "among the several states," or "with the Indian tribes." Every individual--naturally competent to make contracts--whom the state laws declare to be a slave, probably has, and certainly may have, under the regulations of congress, as perfect a right to carry on "commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes," as any other citizen of the United States can have--"any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." Yet this right of carrying on commerce is a right entirely inconsistent with the idea of a man's being a slave.