For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

MR EDITOR:—In article 1st, 2d section of
the United States Constitution, will be found
the following clause defining the basis of rep
resentation and direct taxation, viz.: "Repre
sentatives and direct taxes will be apportioned
among the several States which may be includ
ed within the Union, according to their respec
tive numbers, which shall be determined by ad
ding to the whole number of free persons, in
cluding those bound to service for a term of
years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three
fifths of all other persons." And now, Mr.
Editor, I submit the question to be decided by
constitutional lawyers, and the people of the
free States, whether representatives from slave
holding States are constitutionally entitled to
states in Congress, where slaves are adjudged in
law to be chattel personal, in the hands of
their owners, to all intents, constructions and
purposes, whatever, and where slaves thus chat
telized are numbered in forming the ratio of
representation. Upon ant fair, legal construc
tion of the foregoing clause of the United
States Constitution, which confines the basis of
representation to persons only, slaves chattel
ized are divested of all traits of character—that
in law belong to persons, and the term person
is to that of thing, and chattels are
made up of things animate and inanimate. I,
therefore, aver that chattel representation is in
admissable to membership in Congress; and I
maintain that it is the right and duty of the
free people of the free States so to decide and
enforce their decision through representatives in
Congress. And with this decision, the free
people of the slave States have no just cause of
complaint at being placed on an equality in
representation with those States that has no
chattel representation in Congress; and if slave
States complain at being reduced in representa
tion to a constitutional basis and equality with
that of the free States, the answer to their com
plaint is that no party can be allowed in a
court of justice, to take advantage of their own
wrong; and if they wish to increase their rep
resentation by a compliance with the constitu
tional basis of representation, they have the
material on hand, and know the process, and
have the power by which their claimed chattels
can be adjudged as persons, entitled to repre
sentation and protection by the national gov
ernment.

Unconstitutional chattel representation has
been allowed to exist and override the constitu
tional freedom of the free people of the free as
well as slave States, until forebearance has be
come a fault in the people of the free States—
the bitter fruits of which we are reaping in
Kansas, which calls loudly for a speedy, effectual
and appropriate remedy, which may require
mineral pills, administered in large and frequent

does from the cartridge box, in order to pro
tect, purify and heal the ballot-box of the body
politic in that vicinity. Desperate diseases re
quire desperate remedies; and when the life
of the patient—as in this case—has become hope
less, a remedy that will either kill or cure must
be applied, as the last resort. The call for aid
from Kansas is urgent, and unless promptly
granted, accompanied with repentance for past
delinquincies of duty, and reformation in future,
we have reason to fear a just and more direful
retribution to overtake the nation. Let it not
be forgotten that the three-fifth clause in our
national constitutional basis, requires persons
and not chattels for representation in Congress.

MARCUS STICKNEYStickney, Marcus

.

LOCKPORT, June 20, 1855.