anxious are Northern Whigs and Democrats to maintain their national party organizations, in the discipline of which they have so long served. I know how repugnant it is to their feelings, when the old questions between them are rapidly losing their significance, to have new ones thrust upon them, threatening discord and incurable divisions in their ranks. But should there be no bounds to our devotion to party? Each of the political organizations to which I have alluded consists of a Northern and Southern division, diametrically opposed to each other on the question of slavery. These divisions must be held together by some common bond of union, and this bond is subserviency to the slave interest. This fact can no longer be concealed. The submission of Northern politicians to the behests of slavery is openly proclaimed by Southern gentlemen as the sole condition upon which existing party associations can be maintained. Are we prepared for this submission, to seal this hond of union? We must either do this, or resist like men. The alternatives are presented, and there is no middle ground. We must choose our master; for it is as impossible to serve slavery and freedom at the same time, as to serve God and Mammon. We must ally ourselves to the growing spirit of freedom in the North, which, sooner or later, must be heeded, or we must link our political fortunes to the growing spirit of slavery in the South, which, sooner or later, must be borne down by the powers with which it is at war. We must organize our parties in reference to the increasing anti-slavery feeling of fifteen States of the Union, and ten or twelve millions of people, reinforced by the sentiment of the civilized world; or we must turn our backs upon the progress of free principles, in order to propitiate the smiles of an oligarchy of two or three hundred thousand slaveholders. We must sympathize with the spirit of liberty, which is now swelling the heart of Christendom, and causing even despotisms to tremble; or we must hold no communion with that spirit, and spurn it from our thoughts, lest the dealers in human flesh should be offended, and refuse to aid us in the prosecution of our partisan schemes. Such, I repeat, are the alternatives to which our slaveholding brethren have invited our attention. For one, I am ready to choose between them. I will enter into no 66 covenant with death." I will agree to no truce with slaveholders so long as they insist upon their unholy exactions. I will form no alliance with men who foreordain my submission to their will as the tenure of their friendship. And the party, in my judgment, that shall now seek to maintain its unity by yielding to these demands of slavery,

will dig for itself a political grave from which there will be no resurrection. It may survive for a time; it may achieve a temporary triumph over its adversary; but it will array itself in hostility to the rights of man, sacrifice its integrity and moral influence, and thus perish by its own suicidal hand. Sir, I can acknowledge no allegiance to any such party. Its conventions and caucus arrangements have no power over my action. Not servility to the South, but uncompromising resistance to her further encroachments, must determine my party associations. This, I have already said, is the paramount question, upon which all the parties of the North should band themselves together as one man. Most of the questions which have heretofore divided the American people have been settled. Is there any issue now on the subject of a United States Bank? Experience has shown that this nation can prosper without such an institution. It is not demanded by the voice of the people nor the exigencies of the government. Years ago, it was declared by the highest Whig authority to be an "obsolete idea." Is there any issue as to distributing the proceeds of the public lands? It has been swept away by the tide of political events, and the beneficent doctrine of land reform is destined, I trust, at some time not far in the future, to receive the sanction of Congress. Is there any real question at present respecting a protective tariff? Some faint efforts are being made to galvanize this question into life, and drag it from the grave into which it is sinking; but these efforts will be fruitless. I have no belief that this government will return to the old-fashioned Whig policy of high protective duties. The spirit of the age, and the policy of the leading nations of the earth, are tending more and more in the direction of free trade; whilst the restrictive systems of the past are perishing from the same causes that have originated and are carrying forward other reforms. The philanthropy which is elevating the 'condition of the toiling million, mitigating the rigors of penal law, and breaking the chains of the slave, is at the same time removing the shackles from the commerce of the world. It is not protection to capital, but protection to man's rights, protection to the hand that labors, that should invoke the action of the government. It is not protection to American manufactures, but protection to American men, that I would now advocate; and, like the founders of the government, I would make it the starting point in politics, the great central truth in my political creed, to which questions of mere policy should be subordinate.

"Is the dollar only real? God, and truth, and right, a dream?

Weighed against your lying ledgers, must our manhood kick the beam?"

Must we blink humanity itself in our loyalty to "regular nominations," or our devotion or opposition to measures of policy that are dead and buried? The Northern States have declared that Congress should prevent the introduction of slavery into the Territories of the government. The Southern States declare that this shall not be done. It is a contest between the two sections of the Union, as to whether slavery or freedom shall establish her altars in those Territories. It is a contest between liberty and despotism. It is not a quarrel about "goat's wool," or a mere punctilio, but a struggle in which great interests and great principles are at stake; a strug gle, the issue of which is to determine the weal or woe of millions, and addresses itself not to the judgments only, but to the consciences of Northern men. The Free Soil men in Congress desire the application of the ordinance of Jefferson, come what may. In order to maintain their faithfulness to this principle, they have sundered their party allegiance, and for this cause they are branded as" fanatics," and denounced as traitors. The vocabulary of our language is ransacked for words strong enough to express their baseness and infamy as a party, and their depravity and recklessness as men. The gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. SAVAGE], who addressed the committee on yesterday, has already consigned them to their fate, among the outcasts and offscouring of the earth. The gentleman from Maryland [Mr. McLANE] is so brimful of wrath at their iniquities, that he styles them "a pestilent set of vipers, that ought in God's name to be destroyed." Sir, it might be well for the honorable gentleman to try that experiment. I have yet to learn that Free Soil men have not the same rights in this country and on this floor as slave soil men. I have yet to learn that the doctrine of slavery restriction, which was a virtue in our fathers in 1787, is a crime in their descendants, which should doom them to destruction; and I have yet to learn that the masses in the free States are not in favor of that doctrine, and will not stand by it and its advocates to the last hour.

Mr. Chairman, it was my fortune last year, in the congressional district I have the honor to represent, to witness an effort to annihilate these "vipers," so heartily detested by the gentleman from Maryland. I would say to him, too, that the project was not set on foot by Democrats, but by Taylor Whig managers. What was the result of this experiment? Sir, the Democrats made common cause with the Free Soil party, adopted the ordinance of Jefferson as a part of their platform, and thus achieved a triumph over their foe. And judging from such indications as I have seen of their

present opinions and purposes, these Democrats have not receded, and are not likely to recede, from the principles which they indorsed a year ago in their county conventions, and by their political action; whilst the organs of the Whig party in that same district are now discoursing sweet music to the tune of non-intervention. In 1848 these Whig leaders were for the Proviso against the world. It was their undoubted thunder, which the Free Soil men were feloniously endeavoring to purloin from them. They declared the Whigs to be the only true anti-slavery party. They denounced General Cass as a heartless and unmitigated doughface, for writing his non-intervention Nicholson Letter. Multitudes voted for Gen eral Taylor without pretending that he was in favor of Free Soil, but merely to crush the non-intervention heresy, and "to beat Cass," who now seems, after all, in a fair way to be canonized as a political saint by these same anti-slavery Whig leaders. Sir, instead of annihilating the Free Soil party, they have been unconsciously playing their own game upon themselves. The rank and file of their party, I trust, will not follow them into the mire of "nonintervention by non-action" with slavery in the Territories. I trust that the great body of the people of all parties in that district will stand firmly upon the platform of freedom, swerving neither to the right nor the left, favoring no further concessions to slavery, and frowning upon the Northern recreant who shall be found doing battle for slaveholders against his own section of the Union.

But however this may be, my own course is clear. I shall take no backward step. I have thrown my fortunes into the scale of freedom, and I am willing to abide the issue. Holding the views I have honestly embraced, reared as I have been in a free State, and representing as I do a constituency of freemen, I trust there is no earthly temptation that could seduce me from the cause I have espoused. And that cause, whatever may for the time betide it or its votaries, will as certainly triumph as that truth is omnipotent, or that God governs the world.

3

"THE HEALING MEASURES."

IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE ARMY APPROPRIATION BILL, SEPTEMBER 25, 1850.

[Of "The Healing Measures" of 1850 (as they were then called), the Fugitive Slave Bill was by far the most infamous. On the 12th of September it was reached on the Speaker's table, and on motion of Mr. Thompson, of Pennsylvania, the previous question was seconded on its passage; and thus, without reference to any committee, without even being printed, and with no opportunity whatever for debate, it was passed. These circumstances called forth several speeches indignantly denouncing this and the other compromise measures, and predicting their utter failure to restore peace to the country. This speech is a specimen.]

MR. CHAIRMAN,-Not having been able to obtain the floor at a more opportune period, I desire to submit a few observations upon the "healing measures" which have finally been carried through Congress. It is with unfeigned reluctance that I engage in any general discussion at this late hour in the session, and in the face of so manifest an anxiety to proceed without delay in completing the business which yet demands our attention; but when I consider the free use which has been made of the gag, in hurrying through this body some of the most important measures of the session, without any opportunity whatever for debate, to say nothing of the parliamentary adroitness by which the opponents of those measures have been vanquished, I feel in a measure justified in any use which I may see fit to make, under the rules provided for our government, of the hour to which I am entitled.

Before the passage of the Texas Boundary Bill, the assertion was again and again made, that those who should vote against it would vote for civil war. It was so declared by the leading organ of the Executive in this city. Gentlemen in the support of the Administration, and those opposing it on other questions, united in this declaration. It went out through the country on the wings of the public press, and was echoed back to the Capitol with the obvious purpose of strengthening the hands of those who could find no other reason for giving the measure their support. Since the passage of the bill the charge has been repeatedly made, that those who voted against it did vote for civil war, and the country has been warned to hold them to a solemn accountability for the recklessness of their