wholly subject to legislation. The repeal of the law of entailments--all
those acts that control the alienation of property, its disposal by
will, its passing to heirs by descent, with the question, who shall be
heirs, and what shall be the rule of distribution among them, or whether
property shall be transmitted at all by descent, rather than escheat to
the estate--these, with statutes of limitation, and various other
classes of legislative acts, serve to illustrate the acknowledged scope
of the law-making power, even where property _is in every sense
absolute_. Persons whose property is thus affected by public laws,
receive from the government no compensation for their losses; unless the
state has been put in possession of the property taken from them.

The preamble of the United States' Constitution declares it to be a
fundamental object of the organization of the government "to ESTABLISH
JUSTICE." Has Congress _no power_ to do that for which it was made the
depository of power? CANNOT the United States' Government fulfil the
purpose for which it was brought into being?

To abolish slavery, is to take from no rightful owner his property; but
to "establish justice" between two parties. To emancipate the slave, is
to "establish justice" between him and his master--to throw around the
person, character, conscience; liberty, and domestic relations of the
one, _the same law_ that secures and blesses the other. In other words,
to prevent by legal restraints one class of men from seizing upon
another class, and robbing them at pleasure of their earnings, their
time, their liberty, their kindred, and the very use and ownership of
their own persons. Finally, to abolish slavery is to proclaim and
_enact_ that innocence and helplessness--now _free plunder_--are
entitled to _legal protection_; and that power, avarice, and lust, shall
no longer revel upon their spoils under the license, and by the