legislation shall be wiped out. Repeal must be the fixed resolve of the non-slaveholding States, and the people of the South should distinctly understand that there can be no harmony with slaveholders until that resolve is consummated.

The outrage of such a measure, particularly in view of the circumstances I have named, is heightened by the manner in which it was carried through this body. No opportunity whatever was given to its opponents to examine or discuss its provisions. It passed the Senate only a few days before its passage here, after various amendments; and when we were called on to vote upon it, I do not believe that ten of those Northern gentlemen who supported it had looked into its provisions with any care, or knew what the bill contained. Although one of the most important measures of the session, it was neither printed so that members could examine it, nor referred to the Committee of the Whole. Under the operation of the gag it became a law; and the large vote it received seems to have been given because it was called a fugitive slave bill, and was understood to be included in the "general scheme of pacification," a part of the bargain made by the high contracting parties. Such, in fact, were the reasons urged by Southern members why Northern ones should support it, whilst the out-and-out doughfaces acknowledged that good faith required them to do so.

Mr. Chairman, this memorable session of the Thirty-first Congress is rapidly hastening to a close. The people will judge whether it will hereafter be famous or infamous by reason of its leading measures. The Texas Boundary Bill, which so shamefully compromises Northern honor whilst it so completely gluts the demands of slavery, has become a law. The Wilmot Proviso has been sacrificed, and we are told that "its dead carcass has been carried to its unhallowed grave;" whilst the faith of the nation has been plighted to the South, so far as Congress has the power to do so, that additional slaveholding States may be admitted into the Union from the Territories for which governments have been provided. The Fugitive Slave Bill has been passed, which perils the freedom of every colored man in the North, and makes every white citizen of the free States a constable and jail-keeper for Southern slaveholders. These are the fruits of the protracted and unparalleled struggle which we have witnessed in both houses during the present season. These measures have been brought forth after a congressional incubation of more than nine months, to the great joy alike of politicians and Texas bond-holders. These are the "healing measures

which are to dry up the "gaping wounds" that have threatened to bleed the nation to death. Harmony and concord, we are told, will now resume their authority in this distracted land. "The country is safe," "The Union is saved," "Civil war is averted," whilst it is announced, with equal joy and the firing of one hundred guns in this city, that "agitation" is ended and the "fanatics". no longer in the land of the living.

Sir, let not the slaveholder nor the slaveholder's friend be deceived by the delusive hope that harmony is now to be restored between the two sections of the Union. The day of its restoration has been put far distant in the triumph of the very measures by which it was sought to hasten its advent. As I have already observed, harmony, permanent peace, cannot result from the triumph of wrong, unless the world is governed by demons. The fundamental principle, the grand idea on which our government was founded, is Freedom, the sacredness of Human Rights; and just in proportion as its policy has departed from this idea and sought to build up an opposing element, an alien and hostile interest, just in that same proportion has it sown the seeds of discord and weakness in the nation. Concessions to slavery have produced all the "agitation" and all the mischiefs by which the government is embarrassed. It is worse than folly, it is wickedness, to strive for lasting harmony in this great nation in any other way than by harmonizing its policy with the thought which gave it birth. It has been said truly, that slavery becomes more hideous in this country than in any other, by its contrast with our free institutions. "It is deformity married to beauty; it is as if a flame from hell were to burst forth in the regions of the blessed." "Can the liberties of a nation," said Mr. Jefferson, "be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever." And is it possible, in the middle of the nineteenth century, to heal the wounds of the country and save the Union by removing further and further "from the minds of the people the only firm basis of our liberties," "a conviction that they are the gift of God?" Is the salvation of the Union to be accomplished by feeding and pampering an institution which in 1784 made Jefferson "tremble?" The people of the South contend that slavery is a blessing, to be diffused and perpetuated for its own sake. They do not acknowledge it as an evil, which they continue

among them on account of the difficulty of escaping from it; but they cling to it from choice, through the love of it, and desire to spread the curse over the country. And they the propagandists of their opinions. By assuming this ground they array themselves in hostility to the moral sense of the civilized world. They forfeit all just right to be regarded as a Christian community. To such a people the very atmosphere of Christendom is poison. And can concord be restored between them and the North by subjecting the National Government to their policy? "Such a people," says a gifted writer, "should studiously keep itself from communion with the free part of the country. It should suffer no railroad from that section to cross its borders. It should block up intercourse with us by sea and land. Still more: it should abjure connection with the whole civilized world; for from every country it would be invaded by an influence hostile to slavery. It should borrow the code of the Dictator of Paraguay, and seal itself hermetically against the infectious books, opinions, and visits of foreigners." In this way it is possible that agitation might be avoided; but so long as two hundred thousand slaveholders keep in bondage three millions of their fellow-beings, and not only demand the control of the government, but that the moral world shall stand still for their particular accommodation, so long will the spirit of freedom wage war upon their pretensions. In the very nature of things, slavery and freedom are the irreconcilable foes of each other; and therefore their conflicts cannot cease until Justice shall assert her supremacy, in the overthrow of the former. "The world is against it, and the world's Maker." Its doom is sealed by the operation of a law as certain and as inevitable as that of gravitation.

You might as well attempt to reverse the current of the Mississippi, or change a decree of fate, as to attempt by an act of Congress to control those moral forces by which American slavery shall perish, or to restore harmony to the country by giving up the government to its unbridled sway. The suppression of agitation in the non-slaveholding States will not and cannot follow the "peace measures " recently adopted. The alleged death of the Wilmot Proviso will only prove the death of those who sought to kill it, whilst its advocates will multiply in every portion of the North. The covenant for the admission of additional slave States will be repudiated, whilst a renewed and constantly increasing agitation will spring up in behalf of the doctrine of "No more slave States." The outrage of surrendering free soil to Texan slavery cannot fail to be followed by the same results, and just as naturally

as fuel feeds the flame which consumes it. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill will open a fresh wound in the North, and it will continue to bleed just as long as the law stands unrepealed. The existence of slavery in the capital of the Republic, upheld by the laws of Congress, must of itself keep alive an agitation which will be swelled with the continuance of the evil. Sir, these questions are no longer within the control of politicians. Party discipline, presidential nominations, and the spoils of office, cannot stifle the free utterance of the people respecting the great struggle now going on between the free spirit of the North and a domineering oligarchy in the South. Gentlemen may quarrel about Pennsylvania iron, and New England manufactures, river and harbor improvements, and the best disposition of the public lands; but the question which more than all others comes home to the bosoms of men is, whether slavery or freedom shall have the ascendency in this government. "I never would have drawn my sword in defense of America," said General Lafayette, "if I had thought that I was thereby founding a land of slaves." Here, sir, lies the great question, and it must be met. Neither acts of Congress nor the devices of partisans can postpone or evade it. It will have itself answered. I am aware that it involves the bread and butter of whole hosts of politicians; and I do not marvel at their attempts to escape it, to smother it, to hide it from the eyes of the people, and to dam up the moral tide which is forcing it upon them. Neither do I marvel at their firing of guns and bacchanalian libations over "the dead body of the Wilmot." Such labors and rejoicings are by no means unnatural; but they will be followed by disappointment. It is in vain to expect peace by continued concessions to an institution which is becoming every hour more and more a stigma upon the nation, and which instead of seeking new conquests and new life should be preparing itself with grave-clothes for a decent exit from the world; concessions revolting to the humanity, the conscientious convictions, the religion and patriotism of the free States. When the action of the Federal Government shall be entirely withdrawn from the support of slavery, and the States in which it exists shall be content with the protection which their own laws shall afford, then agitation may cease. Sooner than that it

cannot, and it ought not.

THE HOMESTEAD BILL.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 29, 1851.

[The doctrines of this speech, now so generally accepted, found very little favor in Congress when it was delivered. "Abolitionism" itself was scarcely more odious, while the few men who advocated the homestead policy were branded as “ agrarians," "revolutionists," and "levelers." Only eleven years later, however, the Homestead Bill became a law, and its wisdom and beneficence have already been fully vindicated. Its single radical fault was the lack of a provision forbidding the sale of the public lands in large bodies to non-residents for speculative purposes; and for this supplemental enactment Mr. Julian has labored zealously for years.]

MR. SPEAKER,- The anxiety I feel for the success of the measure now before us, and its great importance, as I conceive, to the whole country, have induced me to beg the indulgence of the House in a brief statement of the reasons which urge me to give it my support. I do this the more willingly, because there has been a manifest disposition here, during the whole of the session, to suppress entirely the discussion of this bill, and at the same time, by parliamentary expedients, to avoid any direct action upon it. It seems to be troublesome to gentlemen. Many who are opposed to its principles appear to be haunted by the suspicion that the people are for it, and hence they will not vote directly against it. They prefer not to face it in any way. The proceedings on yesterday prove this. The House then refused to lay the bill on the table; but immediately afterwards, its reference to the Committee of the Whole, which was substantially equivalent, was carried by a large majority. There was an opportunity of evading the responsibility of a direct vote, and of accomplishing, by indirection, what gentlemen did not dare do by their open and independent action. I refer to these facts because I wish them to go before the people. I desire the country to understand the action of this body, in reference to the question under discussion.

Our present land system was established by act of Congress as far back as the year 1785. From that time to the 30th of last September the government has sold one hundred and two millions. four hundred and eight thousand six hundred and forty acres. Within the same period it has donated about fifty millions of acres