Begged leave to explain the reason of this clause. In some of the
Northern States, they have emancipated all their slaves. If any of
our slaves, said he, go there and remain there a certain time, they
would, by the present laws, be entitled to their freedom, so that
their masters could not get them again. This would be extremely
prejudicial to the inhabitants of the Southern States, and to
prevent it, this clause is inserted in the Constitution. Though the
word _slave_ be not mentioned, this is the meaning of it. The
Northern delegates, owing to their particular scruples on the
subject of slavery, did not choose the word _slave_ to be mentioned.
But even if TWO clauses are immoral that is enough for our purpose,
and shews that no honest man should engage to uphold them. Who has
the right to construe and expound the laws? Of course the Courts of
the Nation. The Constitution provides (Article 3, Section 2,) that
the Supreme Court shall be the final and only interpreter of its
meaning. What says the Supreme Court? That this clause does relate
to slaves, and order their return. All the other courts concur in
this opinion. But, say some, the courts are corrupt on this question.
Let us appeal to the people. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of
every thousand answer, that the courts have construed it rightly,
and almost as many cheerfully support it. If the unanimous,
concurrent, unbroken practice of every department of the Government,
judicial, legislative, and executive, and the acquiescence of the
people for fifty years, do not prove which is the true construction,
then how and where can such a question ever be settled? If the
people and the courts of the land do not know what they themselves
mean, who has authority to settle their meaning for them?
If the Constitution is not what history, unbroken practice, and the
courts prove that our fathers intended to make it, and what too,
their descendants, this nation say they did make it, and agree to
uphold,--who shall decide what the Constitution is?
This is the sense then in which the Nation understand that the
promise is made to them. The Nation _understand_ that the judge
pledges himself to return fugitive slaves. The judge knows this when
he takes the oath. And Paley expresses the opinion of all writers on
morals, as well as the conviction of all honest men, when he says,
"that a promise is binding in that sense in which the promiser
thought at the time that the other party understood it."