tives from slaveholding States, and four from States non-slaveholding; a distinction in the. committee directly the reverse of that of the interests represented by them. A minority of the People of the United States is represented by a majority of that committee, and this on a question vital to their interests. In the next place, it is a question of deep party concern as to the Administration and the Opposition parties of the country at this time; and the committee consists of six friends of the present Administration, and only of, at most, three of the Opposition; more probably, I might say, of two to seven in favor of the Administration.

Now, that this is a question between the free and the slaveholding States, I believe no man can have any doubt at all. If he has, an inspection of the yeas and nays on any one of the questions which distinguish the two will immediately satisfy him. That it is a question pecu-/ liarly interesting to the present Administration, which is understood, avowedly, boastingly, and openly, to be the Administration of a Northern man with Southern principles, there cannot be a doubt. This is the combination in the committee: a sectional combination of interests of the slaveholding against the free States, and an Administration combination of a Northern Administration with Southern principles. Sir, of those Southern principles affecting Northern men we have daily demonstration in this House, to which it is unnecessary for me to refer. But thus it is. This committee, the most important in the House, is composed, first, with regard to sectional questions, of a majority of members representing a minority of the People; and, secondly, as to the question of Administration and Opposition, it is a committee consisting of two thirds Administration men, and less than one third of Opposition men.

Now, I will not ask what is the relative strength of this Administration and its opponents in the People of the United States. We are receiving daily proofs of that. I will not ask what is the relative proportion in this House of Administration and Opposition men: we had yesterday, on an exceedingly trifling question, a demonstration of what that was, when the vote stood 99 to 99, and was made 99 to 100 only by the casting vote of the Speaker. Now, of a House thus constituted, here is a committee on subjects of the deepest interest to the country, to the whole country, and to every part of it, in which six and a half or seven members are Administration men, and the residue belong to the Opposition. I say, then, that this committee is not the committee to which I by preference should have referred those petitions and memorials which had been committed to me that I might present them to the House, and might do all that was in my power to do justice to the memorialists. Observe, there was then no resolution presented from any State Legislature; but on my motion to refer the memorials to a select committee, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs seized upon them, and insisted that his committee must have them-a committee consisting of five slaveholders and four freemen, and six and a half supporters of the Administration of the Northern man with Southern principles. This was the committee that must have jurisdiction over this all-absorbing question.

The first thought of the Speaker was, that a motion to refer to a standing committee of the House took precedence of a motion for a select committee. I do not mention this to complain of it at all. A debate

arose, and the consideration of the subject was postponed. However, it seems that even that did not answer. Observe, that the famous resolution of the 21st of December-PATTON's gag-had not then been passed by the House. No resolution had then been adopted by which the whole mass of the will, wants, and prayers of the People of the United States was struck away. I then presented another petition, and made the same motion that it be referred to a select committee; the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs immediately started up, and moved that it be referred to that committee. The petitions having been taken up next day, a motion was then made by Mr. WISE to lay them on the table; and I find from the Journal that the vote stood, 127 to 68. Then, a few days after, came the general resolution of the 21st of December, requiring that all memorials, petitions, and papers, referring to slavery and the slave trade, be laid upon the table, without reading, printing, or further action of the House; and from that time, for two or three months, the same befell every petition and memorial in which the name of Texas was concerned. The House cannot have forgotten that, whenever a motion was made for a select committee, there never failed some voice to be heard; or, if there did, the Speaker considered it as a matter of course, constructively, that a motion was made to lay the papers on the table, and laid on the table they were.

But on the 14th of February I find an entry on the Journal, stating that Mr. HEMAN ALLEN presented the following resolutions of the Legislature of the State of Vermont:

"LEGISLATURE OF VERMONT-TEXAS-SLAVERY-THE SLAVE TRADE, &c. "The committee to whom were referred numerous petitions of citizens in all parts of the State, praying that our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested, to use their influence to prevent the annexation, by that body, of Texas to the United States, and calling on the General Assembly of Vermont itself to protest against the same in any way being done

"And to whom were also referred numerous memorials from various parts of the State, praying this honorable body to adopt resolutions declaring

"First. That Congress has the constitutional power to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia;

"Second. That it has the constitutional power to abolish them in the several Territories of the Union where they exist;

"Third. That it has the constitutional power to prohibit the slave trade between the several States of the Union; and

"Fourth. That, in regard to all these particulars, Congress ought immediately to exercise that power

"And to whom were also referred numerous petitions, praying this honorable body to protest against the admission of any new State into this Union whose Constitution tolerates domestic slavery, have had the same under consideration, and beg leave to report as follows:

"The committee have not been enabled to find in the Constitution of the United States any provision delegating to Congress power to incorporate with our territory a separate and independent State. Such is Texas. It is true Congress possesses power to admit into the Union "new States;" but it is believed they must be those, and only those, whose constitutional forms of government are authorized and approved by the legislative sanction of that body.

"The purchase of Louisiana and Florida, and the annexation of them to the territory of the Government, were, it is believed, assumptions of power on the part of the Government with which the Constitution did not clothe that body. Popular approbation, added to the fact that these acquisitions were necessary to the safe and convenient use by our fellow-citizens of large sections of our country lying contigu

ous to them, prevented, at the time, any strong opposition to these acts of purchase, or any examination of a serious character into the authority by which they were done. But, leaving out of view what is thought to be a decisive constitutional inhibition of the annexation of Texas to the Union, there are other objections which seem insurmountable to the committee. The State of Mexico, of which Texas was one of the confederate provinces, and from which it has but lately been torn by violence, had adopted, and practically carried out, in her political organization, sentiments that, it seems to the committee, lie at the foundation of all just government, and which are thus happily set forth in the Constitution of this State: All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent, and inalienable rights, among which are the enjoying and defending of life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.' Under the influence of these principles, Mexico, in a manner that won for her the augmented respect of the civilized world, had honorably abolished the system of slavery that attached to her during her colonial dependence on the kingdom of Spain. Texas, on the other hand, no sooner had separated from Mexico, and assumed an independent position, than she showed an utter disregard of these principles, and of the just respect of the great body of Christian nations, by incorporating indissolubly with her political system the enslavement, the unconditional and perpetual enslavement, of a part of the human family-of that part, too, who, it seems to your committee, have already wept long enough over the wrongs and afflictions they have suffered from their brethren.

"Against every form of oppression the People of Vermont have, at all times, borne honorable testimony. In their Constitution they have published to the world their everlasting opposition to slavery-even down to the minutest and least revolting of its modifications. It would, then, be inconsistent in Vermont-it would prove that she had somewhat cooled in the fervor of her love for liberty-should she consent to be drawn into close and fraternal bonds with a People who, beyond any yet known in modern times, have made the most deliberate and heartless assault on human freedom. "There is one other reason against this measure that the committee ought not to omit presenting to your honorable body. Its most industrious advocates urge it, not because our population, too crowded for our present bounds, justly call for others more extended; not because it is necessary to the unencumbered, safe, and profitable use and enjoyment of all the resources and advantages of any part of the territory we now possess; but for the avowed object of adding to and confirming the slaveholding influence in the management of the Government. The anarchy and disorder that now prevail in the South; the apparent overthrow, of late, of her own constitutional and legal barriers, erected for the security of the citizens, and the seeming want of power in her proper authorities to re-establish them; the illegal outrages which her own citizens, as well as those from the free States, have suffered for the last two or three years in the South, and to which, it would appear, up to this time, they are exposed-outrages that, so far as your committee have the means of information, have, in many instances, been provoked by an honorable advocacy of liberty, and a condemnation of slavery not less honorable, or from a suspicion that the one was honored and the other detested-outrages that have been passed by unpunished and unnoticed by the proper tribunals where they have been perpetrated: these, and other fearful sacrifices of important interests by the North, demanded by the South to be offered up for the security of her peculiar institution; the surrender that she asks from us of the freedom of speech, the liberty of the press, the right of petition-all these united inspire your committee with a well-founded apprehension that the additional weight which the annexation of Texas to the United States would give to the slaveholding interest in our political organization, would, in all probability, soon lead either to a dissolution of the Union, or to the political degradation of the free States, and, eventually, to the entire overthrow of their common liberties: Wherefore the committee recommend the adoption by the General Assembly of the following resolutions: "W. R. RANNEY, "MILTON_BROWN, "For Committee.

"1. Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives, That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested, to use their influence in that body to prevent the annexation of Texas to the Union.

2. Resolved, That, representing as we do the People of Vermont, we do hereby, in their name, SOLEMNLY PROTEST against such annexation in any form.

"3. Resolved, That, as the Representatives of the People of Vermont, we do solemnly protest against the admission into this Union of any State whose Constitution tolerates domestic slavery.

4. Resolved, That Congress have full power, by the Constitution, to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia and in the Territories of the United States.

"5. Resolved, That Congress has the constitutional power to prohibit the slave trade between the several States of this Union, and to make such laws as shall effectually prohibit such trade.

"6. Resolved, That our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives requested, to present the foregoing report and resolutions to their respective Houses in Congress, and use their influence to carry the same speedily into effect.

7. Resolved, That the Governor of this State be requested to transmit a copy of the foregoing report and resolutions to the President of the United States, to the Executives of the several States, and to each of our Senators and Representatives in Congress."

Then comes the authentication of the resolutions, as passed by both Houses of the Legislature of the State of Vermont. It is worthy of remark how these resolutions were disposed of. This, be it remembered, was the first application from one of the sovereign States. It was presented nearly two months after the gag, and the entry on the Journal states that the resolutions were laid on the table under the resolution of the House of the 21st of December. That is the gag. it not most extraordinary? What was the resolution of the 21st of December? It declares

66

Was

"That all petitions, memorials, and papers, touching the abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring of slaves, in any State, District, or Territory of the United States, be laid upon the table, without being debated, printed, read, or referred, and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon.'

Yet here are the resolutions printed; yes, printed on the Journal of this House; and then it is said that they were laid on the table under this resolution, which declares that they should not be printed. Why, what does the Journal mean? We had it over and over again that no resolution or paper on this subject shall be printed. Yet here the resolutions are printed, and it is declared that they are laid on the table under that resolution. Now, if the resolutions might be printed, why might they not be debated? Why not read? Why might not the House act on them? Is it that there is something so odious, so detestable, in that resplution, that when the Speaker came to determine how the Journal of that day should be made up, he dared not carry it into effect? Was it that he did not dare to insult a State of this Union by denying its right to have its resolutions printed on the Journals of this House? Was that the reason? I hope it was; because, if I can bring the Speaker and this House to be ashamed of the resolution, I hope it will soon disappear, at least from the practice of this House, forever. Was this the reason? Or was it, as the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs said of the reference of a memorial to that committee, done from inadvertence?

Thus stood matters on the 14th of February. On the 26th of March, six weeks later, Mr. Noves, from Maine, presented a memorial and remonstrance from 31 citizens of Lubec, in Maine, against the annexation of Texas to the Union. The gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. LEGARE] does not know that. [A laugh.] He knows nothing about it.

He has not looked into the paper, and I give him this now as information. The memorial was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. There was the inadvertence, and here is the remonstrance :

"To the honorable the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled:

"The undersigned, inhabitants of Lubec, in the State of Maine, solemnly protest against admission of Texas into the Union.

"LUBEC, March 15, 1838."

[Signed by 32 names.]

That is the whole, sir. There is not one word of argument, not a reason is given. It expresses simply the feeling of the petitioners. Was it to load the shoulders of the Committee on Foreign Affairs with too much labor and toil to require them to look into this memorial? No. But they did not look into it. They never have read it. I presume there is not a member of that committee that knew of its existence till this moment. They hear of it now for the first time. Still it was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and a standing rule of this House declares that the committee shall take it into consideration. The reference was made on the 26th of March. Did they take it into consideration? No, sir. The gentleman from South Carolina has answered that question. He says that he never looked into one of these memorials, and he speaks, no doubt, for the whole committee. He does not, like his colleague, [Mr. DROMGOOLE,] declare that he will not be catechised. No, he comes out fairly, and says, I never did look into one of them. The committee, therefore, from the 26th of March to this time, nearly three months, never looked into that petition. Well, sir, six weeks later I cannot quote the Journal, because it has not been delivered to us-I applied for it, and was told that the manuscript is at the printer's

Mr. CAMBRELENG here rose, and inquired of the Chair whether the morning hour had not expired.

The CHAIR announced that the hour had expired, whereupon Mr. ADAMS resumed his seat.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1838.

Mr. ADAMS said that he was yesterday observing upon the course of the House in regard to the petitions of the People, and the joint resolutions of several State Legislatures, in relation to the annexation of Texas to the Union. He had stated what had been the action of the House in regard to the first memorials presented by himself, and the course pursued with regard to them, and those which followed, by the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, when he (Mr. ADAMS) had moved to refer them to a select committee. He had also referred to the succession of legislative resolutions from the different States that had sent them to that House, upon this subject, and which, till some time in the month of March, 1838, had successively been ordered to lie on the table. Among these were the resolutions of the Legislature of the State of Rhode Island. He mentioned these particularly, because Mr. TillingHAST had expressed a wish to speak upon them, and he had told that gentleman that, in the course of his remarks, it was his intention particularly to allude to them, as well as to the resolutions upon the same sub