"But they say that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Well, gentlemen, I only ask you to take the subject into consideration for yourselves; just weigh the authority that I have adduced upon this subject: one hundred and thirty-four to forty-two in the House of Representatives; twenty out of twenty-two senators in 1820; Monroe, the Southern President, and all his Cabinet, with John C. Calhoun among them; the whole body of Democrats in the Senate of 1845; Polk and his party in 1847, upon the admission of Oregon; and then take the pigmies, and the butterflies, and the grasshoppers of the present day, who are croaking in every corner of the street about the unconstitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, and tell me, then, where is the authority for its unconstitutionality?

"But, admit it to have been unconstitutional, what was the object in disturbing it? What practical injury did it inflict? You are obliged to have free and slave states, and dividing-lines between them. Is it not as well to have a straight line as a crooked one? and was it not as well to have let alone the straight line established by our forefathers, which had become sanctified by time, and was held for years almost as sacred as the Constitution under which we live? It was as well for us, but it was not as well for the Democratic party. And why? Because they were without food to live upon; they were without the elements of combination that gave them strength; they had nothing upon which they could unite their party. Pierce, by his Cabinet appointments, his appointments in New York, by his turning out Bronson because he would not turn out the Hard-shells and put in the Soft-shells, had broken down the Democratic party. It was a rickety-rackety concern, a sort of broken-down monster that could not stand the test of public scrutiny and observation. And it was necessary to

repeal the Missouri Compromise to get up agitation upon the question of slavery, in order to delude weak-minded, sappy-headed, tender-footed, faint-hearted Whigs and Americans to vote for the Democratic nominee upon the plea that the South was in danger, that slavery was in danger.

"Gentlemen, I can truly say that there is nothing that I predicted in 1854, as the result of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, that has not happened. I said at the time, 'You gentlemen of the South regard Mr. Seward as your greatest enemy. I tell you that every man in the South who votes for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is unwittingly engaged in the service of Mr. Seward. After you have repealed this Missouri Compromise you will have not more national Democracy and no more national Whiggery; you will have in the North no more Hunkers, Hard-shells, or Adamantines; they will all become Soft-shells, Barnburners, and Free-soilers.' And so they are; all are now united under the cognomen of Republicans, and I added, he that does not see the dark spirit of disunion lurking around this bill is a short-sighted man.

"Now, gentlemen, I part with this subject by saying that those men who take the ground that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, or that the Compromise Measures of 1850 repealed the Compromise Measures of 1820, perpetrate a libel upon the living and a calumny upon the dead. I am here, gentlemen, not only to tell you what I think, but to tell you all I think as far as time will allow me to do it. I am not speaking for the South or for the North. I am neither a Southern man nor a Northern man, but I am a National Union man.

My position on the question of slavery is this, and, so far from wishing to conceal it, I desire it should be known to all. Muzzles were made for dogs, and not for men, and no

press and no party can put a muzzle on my mouth so long as I value my freedom. I make bold, then, to proclaim that I am no slavery propagandist. I will resort to all proper remedies to protect and defend slavery where it exists, but I will neither assist in nor encourage any attempt to force it upon a reluctant people any where, and still less will I justify the use of the military power of the country to establish it in any of the territories. If it finds its way there by legitimate means it is all well, but never by force through any instrumentality of mine. I am myself a slaveholder, and all the property my children have in the world is slave property, inherited from their mother; and he who undertakes to connect my name or my opinions with Abolitionism is either a knave or a fool, and sometimes both. And this is the only answer I have to make to them. I have not connected myself with any sectional party or sectional question, and, so help me God, I never will.

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"I lay claim here to a sentiment of which I have been to some extent robbed. It has been appropriated by Mr. Clay, but he did not need any emanation from any mind to bolster up his reputation, and therefore I will not allow him to have the credit of it. But I claim to be the first man that said 'I know no North, no South, no East, no West.' I used it upon this stand in 1844, at the time of the annexation of Texas. I know I was rebuked by the Democratic party for not knowing the South. Since that time these have become talismanic words, and now every man who is a candidate for office is required to say that he knows 'no North, no South, no East, no West;' and the Democrats may say with truth they know no North, no South, no East no West; for they know nothing but the cohesive power of public plunder, as Mr. Calhoun said of them, and that is all they know, and all they care for."

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE AGAIN.

The repeal of this time-honored measure, which had given satisfaction and peace for so many years, and the subsequent efforts to force slavery into territory from which by that compromise it had been forever excluded, and with which they stood pledged in honor and in law never to interfere, and that, too, against the known and expressed will of the people inhabiting the territory, produced the effect foreseen and mainly desired, viz., that of stirring up discord and sectional animosities such as had no previous parallel; and this repeal it was that gave rise to the Republican organization, which increased in numbers and influence with such rapidity as to render it plainly manifest that they would soon attain the ascendency in the Union.

Do you recollect when I found every Southern senator, and almost every Southern press in favor of the repeal of that sacred compromise, în absolute defiance of their solemn pledges to the country, how I threw myself alone into the breach, and implored the South to listen to my appeals and to strangle the proposition in its birth? Do you recollect, for this self-sacrificing act, which should have entitled me to the confidence and gratitude, not only of my own party, but of all peace and Union loving men, how I was assailed by the presses of both parties as no public man was ever assailed before or since? These assaults were not confined to my political character, they extended to my personal honor and to the honesty of my motives. Enough was said against me to have justified me, if any thing could, in shooting down in the public streets a score of editors in a day. There was fighting matter enough in these assaults, God knows. But who was I to fight? If I had called one to the field I had to call all in turn, for all were alike abusive; and as I was

not disposed to do this, I resolved to pursue the even tenor of my way, unawed and uninfluenced by the storm that was raging around me on every side; and, though I stood alone, yet I was not to be deterred from the faithful discharge of what I conceived to be a public duty, and I did not shrink from the discharge of that duty or from the position I had taken. I chose to await the result of time, which I knew would bring all things right. If never before, that time has now arrived, and I can with confidence appeal to honest. men of all parties for the rectitude of my position and the truth of my predictions.

The occasion was one of sufficient importance to justify me in encumbering this document with a few extracts taken from my letters on that subject, as published at the time. They are as follows:

I said, "It is my misfortune once again to find myself in a situation that obliges me to take part against many of my best personal and political friends upon a subject and under circumstances that, feeling and believing as I do, it would be criminal on my part to be silent; and, however much I may regret the occasion and the necessity, I must appeal to you, as national men and the conductors of a truly national paper (the National Intelligencer), to allow me the privilege of addressing a few reflections to the people of the South through your columns on a subject of the gravest consequence to their interests-I mean the Nebraska Bill, now pending before the Senate, which, from all we can now see, is likely to become a law without a word against it from the South, and by which it is proposed to repeal or declare inoperative the Missouri Compromise of thirty-four years' standing, and acquiesced in by all parties of the country.

"It is true, I have little now to do with politics, and I am