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federal representation. If these patriarchs insist upon carrying their institutions into new regions, north of 36° 30', I respectfully submit that they ought to resume the modesty of their Jewish predecessors, and relinquish this political feature of the system they thus seek to extend. Will they do that?

Some senators have revived the argument that the Missouri compromise was unconstitutional. But it is one of the peculiarities of compromises, that constitutional objections, like all others, are buried under them by those who make and ratify them, for the obvious reason that the parties at once waive them, and receive equivalents. Certainly, the slaveholding states, which waived their constitutional objections against the compromise of 1820, and accepted equivalents therefor, cannot be allowed to revive and offer them now as a reason for refusing to the non-slaveholding states their rights under that compromise, without first restoring the equivalents which they re ceived on condition of surrendering their constitutional objections.

For argument's sake, however, let this reply be waived, and let us look at this constitutional objection. You say that the exclusion of slavery by the Missouri compromise reaches through and beyond the existence of the region organized as a territory, and prohibits slavery FOREVER even in the states to be organized out of such territory, while, on the contrary, the states, when admitted, will be sovereign, and must have exclusive jurisdiction over slavery for themselves. Let this, too, be granted. But congress, according to the constitution, "may admit new states." If congress may admit, then congress may also refuse to admit that is to say, may reject The greater includes the less; therefore, congress may admit, on condition that the states shall exclude slavery. If such a condition should be accepted, would it not be binding?

new states.

It is by no means necessary, on this occasion to follow the argument further, to the question, whether such a condition is in conflict with the constitutional provision, that the new states received shall be admitted on an equal footing with the original states, because, in this case, and at present, the question relates not to the admission of a state, but to the organization of a territory, and the exclusion of slavery within the territory while its status as a territory shall continue, and no further. Congress have power to exclude slavery in territories, if they have any power to create, control or govern territories at all, for this simple reason: that, find the authority of VOL. IV.

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there you

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congress over the territories wherever you may, exception from that general authority in favor of slavery. If congress has no authority over slavery in the territories, it has none in the District of Columbia. If, then, you abolish a law of freedom in Nebraska, in order to establish a new policy of abnegation, then true consistency requires that you shall also abolish the slavery laws in the District of Columbia, and submit the question of the toleration of slavery within the district to its inhabitants.

If you reply, that the District of Columbia has no local or territorial legislature, then I rejoin, so also has not Nebraska, and so also has not Kansas. You are calling a territorial legislature into exis tence in Nebraska, and another in Kansas, to assume the jurisdiction on the subject of slavery, which you renounce. Then consis tency demands that you call into existence a territorial legislature in the District of Columbia, to assume the jurisdiction here, which you must also renounce. Will you do this? We shall see.

To come closer to the question: What is this principle of abnegating national authority, on the subject of slavery, in favor of the people? Do you abnegate all authority whatever in the territories? Not at all; you abnegate only authority over slavery there. Do you abnegate even that? No; you do not, and you cannot. In the very act of abnegating you legislate, and enact that the states to be hereafter organized shall come in, whether slave or free, as their inhabitants shall choose. Is not this legislating not only on the subject of slavery in the territories, but on the subject of slavery in the future states? In the very act of abnegating, you call into being a legislature which shall resume the authority which you are renouncing. You not only exercise authority in that act, but you exercise authority over slavery when you confer on the territorial legislature the power to act upon that subject. More than this: In the very act of calling that territorial legislature into existence, you exercise authority in prescribing who may elect and who may be elected. You even reserve to yourselves a veto upon every act that they can pass as a legislative body, not only on all other subjects, but even on the subject of slavery itself. Nor can you relinquish that veto; for it is absurd to say that you can create an agent, and depute to him the legislative authority of the United States, which agent you cannot at your own pleasure remove, and whose acts you cannot at your own pleasure disavow and repudiate. The territorial legislature is

your agent. Its acts are your own. Such is the principle that is to supplant the ancient policy—a principle full of absurdities and contradictions.

Again: You claim that this policy of abnegation is based upon a democratic principle. A democratic principle is a principle opposed to some other that is despotic or aristocratic. You claim and exercise the power to institute and maintain government in the territories. Is this comprehensive power aristocratic or despotic? If it be not, how is the partial power aristocratic or despotic? You retain authority to appoint governors, without whose consent no laws can be made on any subject, and judges, without whose consideration no laws can be executed, and you retain the power to change them at pleasure. Are these powers, also, aristocratic or despotic? If they are not, then the exercise of legislative power by yourselves is not. If they are, then why not renounce them also? No, no. This is a far-fetched excuse. Democracy is a simple, uniform, logical system, not a system of arbitrary, contradictory, and conflicting principles!

What

But you must, nevertheless, renounce national authority over slavery in the territories, while you retain all other powers. is this but a mere evasion of solemn responsibilities? The general authority of congress over the territories is one wisely confided to the national legislature, to save young and growing communities from the dangers which beset them in their state of pupilage, and to prevent them from adopting any policy that shall be at war with their own lasting interests, or with the general welfare of the whole republic. The authority over the subject of slavery is that which ought to be renounced last of all, in favor of territorial legislatures, because, from the very circumstances of the territories, those legisla tures are likely to yield too readily to ephemeral influences, and interested offers of favor and patronage. They see neither the great future of the territories, nor the comprehensive and ultimate interests of the whole republic, as clearly as you see them, or ought to see them.

I have heard sectional excuses given for supporting this measure. I have heard senators from the slaveholding states say that they ought not to be expected to stand by the non-slaveholding states, when they refuse to stand by themselves; that they ought not to be expected to refuse the boon offered to the slaveholding states, since

it is offered by the non-slaveholding states themselves. I not only confess the plausibility of these excuses, but I feel the justice of the reproach which they imply against the non-slaveholding states, as far as the assumption is true. Nevertheless, senators from the slaveholding states must consider well whether that assumption is, in any considerable degree, founded in fact. If one or more senators from the north decline to stand by the non-slaveholding states, or offer a boon in their name, others from that region do, nevertheless, stand firmly on their rights, and protest against the giving or the acceptance of the boon. It has been said that the north does not speak out, so as to enable you to decide between the conflicting voices of her representatives. Are you quite sure you have given her timely notice? Have you not, on the contrary, hurried this measure forward, to anticipate her awaking from the slumber of conscious security into which she has been lulled by your last compromise! Have you not heard already the quick, sharp protest of the legislature of the smallest of the non-slaveholding states, Rhode Island? Have you not already heard the deep-toned and earnest protest of the greatest of those states, New York? Have you not already heard remonstrances from the metropolis, and from the rural dis tricts? Do you doubt that this is only the rising of the agitation that you profess to believe is at rest forever? Do you forget that, in all such transactions as these, the people have a reserved right to review the acts of their representatives, and a right to demand a reconsideration; that there is in our legislative practice a form of RE-ENACTMENT, as well as an act of repeal; and that there is in our political system provision not only for abrogation, but for RESTORATION also? And when the process of repeal has begun, how many and what laws will be open to repeal, equally with the Missouri compromise? There will be this act, the fugitive slave laws, the articles of Texas annexation, the territorial laws of New Mexico and Utah, the slavery laws in the District of Columbia.

Senators from the slaveholding states, you are politicians as well as statesmen. Let me remind you, therefore, that political movements in this country, as in all others, have their times of action and reäction. The pendulum moved up the side of freedom in 1840, and swung back again in 1844 on the side of slavery, traversed the dial in 1848, and touched even the mark of the Wilmot proviso, and returned again in 1852, reaching even the height of the

Baltimore platform. Judge for yourselves whether it is yet ascending, and whether it will attain the height of the abrogation of the Missouri compromise. That is the mark you are fixing for it. For myself, I may claim to know something of the north. I see in the changes of the times only the vibratious of the needle, trembling on its pivot. I know that in due time it will settle; and when it shall have settled, it will point, as it must point forever, to the same constant polar star, that sheds down influences propitious to freedom as broadly as it pours forth its mellow but invigorating light.

I have nothing to do, here or elsewhere, with personal or party motives. But I come to consider the motive which is publicly assigned for this transaction. It is a desire to secure permanent peace and harmony on the subject of slavery, by removing all occasion for its future agitation in the federal legislature. Was there not peace already here? Was there not harmony as perfect as is ever possible in the country, when this measure was moved in the senate a month ago? Were we not, and was not the whole nation, grappling with that one great, common, universal interest, the opening of a communication between our ocean frontiers, and were we not already reckoning upon the quick and busy subjugation of nature throughout the interior of the continent to the uses of man, and dwelling with almost rapturous enthusiasm on the prospective enlargement of our commerce in the east, and of our political sway throughout the world? And what have we now here but the oblivion of death, covering the very memory of those great enterprises, and prospects, and hopes?

Senators from the non-slaveholding states: You want peace. Think well, I beseech you, before you yield the price now demanded, even for peace and rest from slavery agitation. France has got peace from republican agitation by a similar sacrifice. So has Poland; so has Hungary; and so, at last, has Ireland. Is the peace which either of those nations enjoys worth the price it cost? Is peace, obtained at such cost, ever a lasting peace?

Senators from the slaveholding states: You, too, suppose that you are securing peace as well as victory in this transaction. I tell you now, as I told you in 1850, that it is an error, an unnecessary error, to suppose, that because you exclude slavery from these halls to-day, that it will not revisit them to-morrow. You buried the Wilmot

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