ther removed from us than England. We cannot reach her by railroad, nor by unbroken steam navigation. We can send no armies over the prairie, the mountain, and the desert, nor across the remote and narrow Isthmus within a foreign jurisdiction, nor around the Cape of Storms. We may send a navy there, but she has only to open her mines, and she can seduce our navies and appropriate our floating bulwarks to her own defence. Let her only seize our domain within her borders, and our commerce in her ports, and she will have at once revenues and credit adequate to all her necessities. Besides, are we so moderate, and has the world become so just, that we have no rivals and no enemies to lend their sympathies and aid to compass the dismemberment of our empire?

Try not the temper and fidelity of California-at least not now-not yet. Cherish her and indulge her until you have extended your settlements to her borders, and bound her fast by railroads, and canals, and telegraphs, to your interests-until her affinities of intercourse are established, and her habits of loyalty are fixed-and then she can never be disengaged.

California would not go alone. Oregon, so intimately allied to her, and as yet so loosely attached to us, would go also; and then at least the entire Pacific coast, with the western declivity of the Sierra Nevada, would be lost. It would not depend at all upon us, nor even on the mere forbearance of California, how far eastward the long line across the temperate zone should be drawn, which should separate the Republic of the Pacific from the Republic of the Atlantic. Terminus has passed away, with all the deities of the ancient Pantheon, but his sceptre remains. Commerce is the god of boundaries, and no man now living can foretell his ultimate decree.

But it is insisted that the admission of California shall be attended by a COMPROMISE of questions which have arisen out of SLAVERY!

I AM OPPOSED TO ANY SUCH COMPROMISE, IN ANY AND ALL THE FORMS IN WHICH IT HAS BEEN PROPOSED; because, while admitting the purity and the patriotism of all from whom it is my misfortune to differ, I think all legislative compromises, which are not absolutely necessary, radically wrong and essentially vicious. They involve the surrender of the exercise of judgment and conscience on distinct and separate questions, at distinct and separate

times, with the indispensable advantages it affords for ascertaining truth. They involve a relinquishment of the right to reconsider in future the decisions of the present, on questions prematurely anticipated. And they are acts of usurpation as to future questions of the province of future legislators.

Sir, it seems to me as if slavery had laid its paralyzing hand upon myself, and the blood were coursing less freely than its wont through my veins, when I endeavor to suppose that such a compromise has been effected, and that my utterance forever is arrested upon all the great questions-social, moral, and political-arising out of a subject so important, and as yet so incomprehensible.

What am I to receive in this compromise? Freedom in California. It is well; it is a noble acquisition; it is worth a sacrifice. But what am I to give as an equivalent? A recognition of the claim to perpetuate slavery in the District of Columbia; forbearance toward more stringent laws concerning the arrest of persons suspected of being slaves found in the free states; forbearance from the proviso of freedom in the charters of new territories. None of the plans of compromise offered demand less than two, and most of them insist on all of these conditions. The equivalent, then, is, some portion of liberty, some portion of human rights in one region for liberty in another region. But California brings gold and commerce as well as freedom. I am, then, to surrender some portion of human freedom in the District of Columbia, and in East California and New Mexico, for the mixed consideration of liberty, gold, and power, on the Pacific coast.

It has widely

This view of legislative compromises is not new. prevailed, and many of the state constitutions interdict the introduction of more than one subject into one bill submitted for legislative action.

It was of such compromises that Burke said, in one of the loftiest bursts of even his majestic parliamentary eloquence:

Far, far from the commons of Great Britain be all manner of real vice; but ten thousand times farther from them, as far as from pole to pole, be the whole tribe of spurious, affected, counterfeit, and hypocritical virtues! These are the things which are ten thousand times more at war with real virtue, these are the things which are ten thousand times more at war with real duty, than any vice known by its name and distinguished by its proper character.

Far, far from us be that false and affected candor that is eternally in treaty with crime that half virtue, which, like the ambiguous animal that flies about in the twilight of a compromise between day and night, is, to a just man's eye, an odious and disgusting thing. There is no middle point, my lords, in which the commons of Great Britain can meet tyranny and oppression."

VOL. 1-5.

But, sir, if I could overcome my repugnance to compromises in general, I should object to this one, on the ground of the inequality and incongruity of the interests to be compromised. Why, sir, according to the views I have submitted, California ought to come in, and must come in, whether slavery stand or fall in the District of Columbia; whether slavery stand or fall in New Mexico and Eastern California; and even whether slavery stand or fall in the slave states. California ought to come in, being a free state; and, under the circumstances of her conquest, her compact, her abandonment, her justifiable and necessary establishment of a constitution, and the inevitable dismemberment of the empire consequent upon her rejection, I should have voted for her admission even if she had come as a slave state. California ought to come in, and must come in at all events. It is, then, an independent, a para mount question. What, then, are these questions arising out of slavery, thus interposed, but collateral questions? They are unnecessary and incongruous, and therefore false issues, not introduced designedly, indeed, to defeat that great policy, yet unavoidably tending to that end.

Mr. FOOTE. Will the honorable senator allow me to ask him, if the Senate is to understand him as saying that he would vote for the admission of California if she came here seeking admission as a slave state?

Mr. SEWARD. I reply, as I said before, that even if California had come as a slave state, yet coming under the extraordinary circumstances I have described, and in view of the consequences of a dismemberment of the empire, consequent upon her rejection, I should have voted for her admission, even though she had come as a slave state. But I should not have voted for her admission otherwise.

I remark in the next place, that consent on my part would be disingenuous and fraudulent, because the compromise would be unavailing.

It is now avowed by the honorable senator from South Carolina, [Mr. CALHOUN,] that nothing will satisfy the slave states but a compromise that will convince them that they can remain in the Union consistently with their honor and their safety. And what are the concessions which will have that effect. Here they are, in the words of that senator:

"The north must do justice by conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired territory, and do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be

faithfully fulfilled-cease the agitation of the slave question, and provide for the insertion of a provision in the Constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the south in substance the power she possessed, of protecting herself, before the equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of this government.”

These terms amount to this: that the free states having already, or although they may hereafter have, majorities of population, and majorities in both houses of Congress, shall concede to the slave states, being in a minority in both, the unequal advantage of an equality. That is, that we shall alter the Constitution so as to convert the Government from a national democracy, operating by a constitutional majority of voices, into a federal alliance, in which the minority shall have a veto against the majority. And this would be nothing less than to return to the original Articles of Confederation.

I will not stop to protest against the injustice or the inexpediency of an innovation which, if it was practicable, would be so entirely subversive of the principle of democratic institutions. It is enough to say that it is totally impracticable. The free states, northern and western, have acquiesced in the long and nearly unbroken ascendency of the slave states under the Constitution, because the result happened under the Constitution. But they have honor and interests to preserve, and there is nothing in the nature of mankind, or in the character of that people to induce an expectation that they, loyal as they are, are insensible to the duty of defending them. But the scheme would still be impracticable, even if this difficulty were overcome. What is proposed is a political equilibrium. Every political equilibrium requires a physical equilibrium to rest upon, and is valueless without it. To constitute a physical equilibrium between the slave states and the free states, requires, first, an equality of territory, or some near approximation. And this is already lost. But it requires much more than this. It requires an equality or a proximate equality in the number of slaves and freemen. And this must be per petual.

But the census of 1840 gives a slave basis of only 2,500,000, and a free basis of 14,500,000. And the population on the slave basis increases in the ratio of 25 per cent. for ten years, while that on the free basis advances at the rate of 38 per cent. The accelerating movement of the free population, now complained of, will occupy the new territories with pioneers, and every day increases the difficulty of forcing or insinuating slavery into regions

which freemen have pre-occupied. And if this were possible, the African slave trade is prohibited, and the domestic increase is not sufficient to supply the new slave states which are expected to maintain the equilibrium. The theory of a new political equilibrium claims that it once existed, and has been lost. When lost, and how? It began to be lost in 1787, when preliminary arrangements were made to admit five new free states in the northwest territory, two years before the Constitution was finally adopted; that is, it began to be lost two years before it began to exist!

Sir, the equilibrium, if restored, would be lost again, and lost more rapidly than it was before. The progress of the free population is to be accelerated by increased emigration, and by new tides from South America and from Europe and Asia, while that of the slaves is to be checked and retarded by inevitable partial emancipation. "Nothing," says Montesquieu, "reduces a man so low as always to see freemen, and yet not be free. Persons in that condition are natural enemies of the state, and their numbers would be dangerous if increased too high." Sir, the fugitive slave colonies and the emancipated slave colonies in the free states, in Canada, and in Liberia, are the best guaranties South Carolina has for the perpetuity of slavery.

Nor would success attend any of the details of this compromise. And, first, I advert to the proposed alteration of the law concerning fugitives from service or labor. I shall speak on this as on all subjects, with due respect, but yet frankly and without reservation. The Constitution contains only a compact, which rests for its execution on the states. Not content with this, the slave states induced legislation by Congress; and the Supreme Court of the United States have virtually decided that the whole subject is within the province of Congress, and exclusive of state authority. Nay, they have decided that slaves are to be regarded not merely as persons to be claimed, but as property and chattels, to be seized without any legal authority or claim whatever. The compact is thus subverted by the procurement of the slave states. With what reason, then, can they expect the states ex gratia to reassume the obligations from which they caused those states to be discharged? I say, then, to the slave states, you are entitled to no more stringent laws; and that such laws would be useless. The cause of the inefficiency of the present statute is not at all