The new law directly permitted the potential vast expansion of slavery by granting settlers in any territory, for the first time and regardless of its location, the right to decide whether to permit slavery within its boundaries when they applied for it to become an official state in the Union. Lincoln was both opposed to slavery and to its extension on principle, including into any new Western territory that was seeking to become a full-fledged state. Lincoln also suggested that if slavery was allowed to spread it would block free labor from settling in the new states and that, as a result, the entire nation would soon become ever more dominated by slave owners. This would be the inevitable result, Lincoln said, because the latter's representation in the US House of Representatives was always significantly weighted and overcounted according to the number of slaves that they held, as dictated by the Three-fifths Clause in the US Constitution, leaving free states at an increasing disadvantage in governing the nation as a whole.