but reduce it to a melancholy ruin. The people of this country, if I do not wholly mistake their character, are wise as well as virtuous. They know the value of that federal association which is to them the single pledge and guarantee of power and peace. Their warm and pious affections will cling to it as to their only hope of prosperity and happiness, in defiance of pernicious abstractions, by whomsoever inculcated, or howsoever seductive or alluring in their aspect. that the analysis which it contained of the con- | the goodly fabric of the Union to its foundations, stitution, illustrated as it was by historial anecdote rather than by reasoning, would have been just as unsatisfactory to me then as it is now, I might not have been altogether unmoved by those warnings of approaching evil which it seemed to intimate, especially when taken in connection with the observations of the same honorable gentleman on a preceding day, "that delays in disposing of this subject, in the manner he desires, are dangerous, and that we stand on slippery ground." I must be permitted, however, (speaking only for myself) to say, that the hour of dismay is passed. I have heard the tones of the larum bell on all sides, until they have become familiar to my ear, and have lost their power to appal, if, indeed, they ever possessed it. Notwithstanding occasional appearances of rather an unfavorable description, I have long since persuaded myself that the Missouri question, as it is called, might be laid to rest, with innocence and safety, by some conciliatory compromise at least, by which, as is our duty, we might reconcile the extremes of conflicting views and feelings, without any sacrifice of constitutional principle; and in any event, that the Union would easily and triumphantly emerge from those portentous clouds with which this controversy is supposed to have environed it. I confess to you, nevertheless, that some of the principles announced by the honorable gentleman from New York,* with an explicitness that reflected the highest credit on his candor, did, when they were first presented, startle me not a little. They were not perhaps entirely new. Perhaps I had seen them before in some shadowy and doubtful shape, "If shape it might be called, that shape had none, Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb." But in the honorable gentleman's speech they were shadowy and doubtful no longer. He exhibited them in forms so boldly and accurately defined-with contours so distinctly tracedwith features so pronounced and striking, that I was unconscious for a moment that they might be old acquaintances. I received them as "novi hospites" within these walls, and gazed upon them with astonishment and alarm. I have recovered, however, thank God, from this paroxysm of terror, although not from that of astonishment. I have sought and found tranquillity and courage in my former consolatory faith. My reliance is that these principles will obtain no general currency; for, if they should, it requires no gloomy imagination to sadden the perspective of the future. My reliance is upon the unsophisticated good sense and noble spirit of the American people. I have what I may be allowed to call a proud and patriotic trust, that they will give countenance to no principles, which, if followed out to their obvious consequences, will not only shake * Mr. King. Sir, it is not an occasion like this, although connected, as contrary to all reasonable expectation it has been, with fearful and disorganizing theories, which would make our estimates, whether fanciful or sound, of natural law, the measure of civil rights and political sovereignty in the social state, that can harm the Union. It must, indeed, be a mighty storm that can push from its moorings this sacred ark of the common safety. It is not every trifling breeze, however it may be made to sob and howl in imitation of the tempest, by the auxiliary breath of the ambitious, the timid, or the discontented, that can drive this gallant vessel, freighted with every thing that is dear to an American bosom, upon the rocks, or lay it a sheer hulk upon the ocean. I may perhaps mistake the flattering suggestions of hope, (the greatest of all flatterers, as we are told,) for the conclusions of sober reason. Yet it is a pleasing error, if it be an error, and no man shall take it from me. I will continue to cherish the belief, in defiance of the public patronage given by the honorable gentleman from New York, with more than his ordinary zeal and solemnity, to deadly speculations, which, invoking the name of God to aid their faculties for mischief, strike at all establishments, that the union of these States is formed to bear up against far greater shocks than, through all vicissitudes, it is ever likely to encounter. I will continue to cherish the belief, that, although like all other human institutions it may for a season be disturbed, or suffer momentary eclipse by the transit across its disk of some malignant planet, it possesses a recuperative force, a redeeming energy in the hearts of the people, that will soon restore it to its wonted calm, and give it back its accustomed splendor. On such a subject I will discard all hysterical apprehensions-I will deal in no sinister auguries I will indulge in no hypochondriacal forebodings. I will look forward to the future with gay and cheerful hope; and will make the prospect smile, in fancy at least, until overwhelming reality shall render it no longer possible. I have said thus much, sir, in order that I may be understood as meeting the constitutional question as a mere question of interpretation, and as disdaining to press into the service of my argument upon it prophetic fears of any sort, however they may be countenanced by an avowal, formidable by reason of the high reputation of the individual by whom it has been hazarded, of sentiments the most destructive, which if not borrowed from, are identical with, the worst visions of the political philosophy of France when all the elements of discord and misrule were let loose upon that devoted nation. I mean "the infinite perfectibility of man and his institutions," and the resolution of every thing into a state of nature. I have another motive, which, at the risk of being misconstrued, I will declare without reserve. With my convictions, and with my feelings, I never will consent to hold confederated America as bound together by a silken cord, which any instrument of mischief may sever, to the view of monarchical foreigners, who look with a jealous eye upon that glorious experiment which is now in progress amongst us in favor of republican freedom. Let them make such prophecies as they will, and nourish such feelings as they may: I will not contribute to the fulfilment of the former, nor minister to the gratification of the latter. Sir, it was but the other day that we were forbidden, (properly forbidden I am sure, for the prohibition came from you,) to assume that there existed any intention to impose a prospective restraint on the domestic legislation of Missouri-a restraint to act upon it contemporaneously with its origin as a State, and to continue adhesive to it through all the stages of its political existence. We are now, however, permitted to know that it is determined by a sort of political surgery to amputate one of the limbs of its local sovereignty, and thus mangled and disparaged, and thus only, to receive it into the bosom of the constitution. It is now avowed that, while Maine is to be ushered into the Union with every possible demonstration of studious reverence on our part, and on hers with colors flying, and all the other graceful accompaniments of honorable triumph, this illconditioned upstart of the West, this obscure foundling of a wilderness that was but yesterday the hunting ground of the savage, is to find her way into the American family as she can, with an humiliating badge of remediless inferiority patched upon her garments, with the mark of recent, qualified manumission upon her, or rather with a brand upon her forehead to tell the story of her territorial vassalage, and to perpetuate the memory of her evil propensities. It is now avowed that, while the robust district of Maine is to be seated by the side of her truly respectable parent, co-ordinate in authority and honor, and is to be dandled into that power and dignity of which she does not stand in need, but which undoubtedly she deserves, the more infantine and feeble Missouri is to be repelled with harshness, and forbidden to come at all, unless with the iron collar of servitude about her neck, instead of the civic crown of republican freedom upon her brows, and is to be doomed for ever to leading-strings, unless she will exchange those leading-strings for shackles. I am told that you have the power to establish this odious and revolting distinction, and I am referred for the proofs of that power to various parts of the constitution, but principally to that part of it which authorizes the admission of new States into the Union. I am myself of opinion that it is in that part only that the advocates for this restriction can, with any hope of success, apply for a license to impose it; and that the efforts which have been made to find it in other portions of that instrument, are too desperate to require to be encountered. I shall, however, examine those other portions before I have done, lest it should be supposed by those who have relied upon them, that what I omit to answer I believe to be unanswerable. The clause of the constitution which relates to the admission of new States is in these words: "The Congress may admit new States into this Union," &c., and the advocates for restriction maintain that the use of the word "may" imports discretion to admit or to reject; and that in this discretion is wrapped up another-that of prescribing the terms and conditions of admission in case you are willing to admit: "Cujus est dare ejus est disponere." I will not for the present inquire whether this involved discretion to dictate the terms of admission belongs to you or not. It is fit that I should first look to the nature and extent of it. I think I may assume that if such a power be any thing but nominal, it is much more than adequate to the present object-that it is a power of vast expansion, to which human sagacity can assign no reasonable limits that it is a capacious reservoir of authority, from which you may take, in all time to come, as occasion may serve, the means of oppression as well as of benefaction. I know that it professes at this moment to be the chosen instrument of protecting mercy, and would win upon us by its benignant smiles: but I know too it can frown, and play the tyrant, if it be so disposed. Notwithstanding the softness which it now assumes, and the care with which it conceals its giant proportions beneath the deceitful drapery of sentiment, when it next appears before you it may show itself with a sterner countenance and in more awful dimensions. It is, to speak the truth, sir, a power of colossal size-if indeed it be not an abuse of language to call it by the gentle name of a power. Sir, it is a wilderness of powers, of which fancy in her happiest mood is unable to perceive the far distant and shadowy boundary. Armed with such a power, with religion in one hand and philanthropy in the other, and followed with a goodly train of public and private virtues, you may achieve more conquests over sovereignties not your own, than falls to the common lot of even uncommon ambition. By the aid of such a power, skilfully employed, you may "bridge your way" over the Hellespont that separates State legislation from that of Congress; and you may do so for pretty much the same purpose with which Xerxes once bridged his way across the Hellespont that separates Asia from memorial, and speech, with which the press has lately groaned, is a foul blot upon our otherwise immaculate reputation. Let this be conceded Europe. He did so, in the language of Milton, "the liberties of Greece to yoke.' You may do so for the analogous purpose of subjugating and reducing the sovereignties of States, as-yet you are no nearer than before to the your taste or convenience may suggest, and fashioning them to your imperial will. There are those in this House who appear to think, and I doubt not sincerely, that the particular restraint now under consideration is wise, and benevolent, and good; wise as respects the Union-good as respects Missouri-benevolent as respects the unhappy victims whom with a novel kindness it would incarcerate in the south, and bless by decay and extirpation. Let all such beware, lest in their desire for the effect which they believe the restriction will produce, they are too easily satisfied that they have the right to impose it. The moral beauty of the present purpose, or even its political recommendations, (whatever they may be,) can do nothing for a power like this, which claims to prescribe conditions "ad libitum," and to be competent to this purpose, because it is competent to all. This restriction, if it be not smothered in its birth, will be but a small part of the progeny of that prolific power. It teems with a mighty brood, of which this may be entitled to the distinction of comeliness as well as of primogeniture. The rest may want the boasted loveliness of their predecessor, and be even uglier than "Lapland witches." Perhaps, sir, you will permit me to remind you, that it is almost always in company with those considerations that interest the heart in some way or other, that encroachment steals into the world. A bad purpose throws no veil over the licenses of power. It leaves them to be seen as they are. It affords them no protection from the inquiring eye of jealousy. The danger is when a tremendous discretion like the present is attempted to be assumed, as on this occasion, in the names of pity, of religion, of national honor and national prosperity; when encroachment tricks itself out in the robes of piety, or humanity, or addresses itself to pride of country, with all its kindred passions and motives. It is then that the guardians of the constitution are apt to slumber on their watch, or, if awake, to mistake for lawful rule some pernicious arrogation of power. conclusion that you possess power which may deal with other subjects as effectually as with this. Slavery, we are further told, with some pomp of metaphor, is a canker at the root of all that is excellent in this republican empire, a pestilent disease that is snatching the youthful bloom from its cheek, prostrating its honor and withering its strength. Be it so-yet if you have power to medicine to it in the way proposed, and in virtue of the diploma which you claim, you have also power in the distribution of your political alexipharmics to present the deadliest drugs to every territory that would become a State, and bid it drink or remain a colony forever. Slavery, we are also told, is now "rolling onward with a rapid tide towards the boundless regions of the west," threatening to doom them to sterility and sorrow, unless some potent voice can say to it-thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. Slavery engenders pride and indolence in him who commands, and inflicts intellectual and moral degradation on him who serves. Slavery, in fine, is unchristian and abominable. Sir, I shall not stop to deny that slavery is all this and more; but I shall not think myself the less authorized to deny that it is for you to stay the course of this dark torrent, by opposing to it a mound raised up by the labors of this portentous discretion on the domain of others a mound which you cannot erect but through the instrumentality of a trespass of no ordinary kind-not the comparatively innocent trespass that beats down a few blades of grass which the first kind sun or the next refreshing shower may cause to spring again-but that which levels with the ground the lordliest trees of the forest, and claims immortality for the destruction which it inflicts. I shall not, I am sure, be told that I exaggerate this power. It has been admitted here and elsewhere that I do not. But I want no such concession. It is manifest that as a discretionary power it is every thing or nothingthat its head is in the clouds, or that it is a mere figment of enthusiastic speculation-that it has no existence, or that it is an alarming I would not discourage authorized legislation vortex ready to swallow up all such portions upon those kindly, generous, and noble feelings of the sovereignty of an infant State as you which Providence has given to us for the best may think fit to cast into it as preparatory to of purposes: but when power to act is under the introduction into the union of the miserable discussion, I will not look to the end in view, residue. No man can contradict me when I lest I should become indifferent to the lawful- say, that if you have this power, you may ness of the means. Let us discard from this squeeze down a new-born sovereign State to high constitutional question, all those extrinsic the size of a pigmy, and then taking it between considerations which have been forced into its finger and thumb, stick it into some nitch of discussion. Let us endeavor to approach it the Union, and still continue by way of mockery with a philosophic impartiality of temper-to call it a State in the sense of the constituwith a sincere desire to ascertain the boundaries of our authority, and a determination to keep our wishes in subjection to our allegiance to the constitution. Slavery, we are told in many a pamphlet, tion. You may waste it to a shadow, and then introduce it into the society of flesh and blood an object of scorn and derision. You may sweat and reduce it to a thing of skin and bone, and then place the ominous skeleton beside the which England claimed over the colonies was such a power, and it was abused-and hence the Revolution. Such a power is always perilous to those who wield it, as well as to those on whom it is exerted. Oppression is but another name for irresponsible power, if history is to be trusted. ruddy and healthful members of the Union, | perience is a cheat, and fact a liar." The power that it may have leisure to mourn the lamentable difference between itself and its companions, to brood over its disastrous promotion, and to seek in justifiable discontent an opportunity for separation, and insurrection, and rebellion. What may you not do by dexterity and perseverance with this terrific power? You may give to a new State, in the form of terms which it cannot refuse, (as I shall show you hereafter,) a statute book of a thousand volumes-providing not for ordinary cases only, but even for possibilities; you may lay the yoke, no matter whether light or heavy, upon the necks of the latest posterity; you may send this searching power into every hamlet for centuries to come, by laws enacted in the spirit of prophecy, and regulating all those dear relations of domestic concern which belong to local legislation, and which even local legislation touches with a delicate and sparing hand. This is the first inroad. But will it be the last? This provision is but a pioneer for others of a more desolating aspect. It is that fatal bridge of which Milton speaks, and when once firmly built, what shall hinder you to pass it when you please for the purpose of plundering power after power at the expense of new States, as you will still continue to call them, and raising up prospective codes irrevocable and immortal, which shall leave to those States the empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, and convert them into petty pageants, in themselves contemptible, but rendered infinitely more so by the contrast of their humble faculties with the proud and admitted pretensions of those who having doomed them to the inferiority of vassals, have condescended to take them into their society and under their protection? I shall be told, perhaps, that you can have no temptation to do all or any part of this, and, moreover, that you can do nothing of yourselves, or, in other words, without the concurrence of the new State. The last of these suggestions I shall examine by and by. To the first I answer, that it is not incumbent upon me to prove that this discretion will be abused. It is enough for me to prove the vastness of the power as an inducement to make us pause upon it, and to inquire with attention whether there is any apartment in the constitution large enough to give it entertainment. It is more than enough for me to show that vast as is this power, it is with reference to mere territories an irresponsible power. Power is irresponsible when it acts upon those who are defenceless against it-who cannot check it, or contribute to check it, in its exercise-who can resist it only by force. The territory of Missouri has no check upon its power. It has no share in the government of the Union. In this body it has no representative. In the other House it has, by courtesy, an agent, who may remonstrate, but cannot vote. That such an irresponsible power is not likely to be abused, who will undertake to assert? If it is not, "ex The free spirit of our constitution and of our people, is no assurance against the propension of unbridled power to abuse, when it acts upon colonial dependants rather than upon ourselves. Free States, as well as despots, have oppressed those whom they were bound to foster-and it is the nature of man that it should be so. The love of power, and the desire to display it when it can be done with impunity, is inherent in the human heart. Turn it out at the door, and it will in again at the window. Power is displayed in its fullest measure, and with a captivating dignity, by restraints and conditions. The "pruritas leges ferendi" is an universal disease; and conditions are laws as far as they go. The vanity of human wisdom, and the presumption of human reason, are proverbial. This vanity and this presumption are often neither reasonable nor wise. Humanity, too, sometimes plays fantastic tricks with power. Time, moreover, is fruitful in temptations to convert discretionary power to all sorts of purposes. Time, that withers the strength of man and "strews around him like autumnal leaves the rnins of his proudest monuments," produces great vicissitudes in modes of thinking and feeling. It brings along with it, in its progress, new circumstances-new combinations and modifications of the old-generating new views, motives, and caprices-new fanaticisms of endless variety-in short, new every thing. We ourselves are always changing-and what today we have but a small desire to attempt, tomorrow becomes the object of our passionate aspirations. There is such a thing as enthusiasm, moral, religious, or political, or a compound of all three;-and it is wonderful what it will attempt, and from what imperceptible beginnings it sometimes rises into a mighty agent. Rising from some obscure or unknown source, it first shows itself a petty rivulet, which scarcely murmurs over the pebbles that obstruct its way-then it swells into a fierce torrent bearing all before it-and then again, like some mountain stream, which occasional rains have precipitated upon the valley, it sinks once more into a rivulet, and finally leaves its channel dry. Such a thing has happened. I do not say that it is now happening. It would not become me to say so. But if it should occur, woe to the unlucky territory that should be struggling to make its way into the Union at the moment when the opposing inundation was at its height, and at the same instant this wide Mediterranean of discretionary powers, which it seems is ours, should open up all its sluices, and with a con sentaneous rush, mingle with the turbid waters | and agents for the accomplishment of its obof the others! "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." It is objected that the word "may" imports power, not obligation a right to decide a discretion to grant or refuse. To this it might be answered that power is duty on many occasions. But let it be conceded that it is discretionary. What consequence follows? A power to refuse, in a case like this, does not necessarily involve a power to exact terms. You must look to the result which is the declared object of the power. Whether you will arrive at it, or not, may depend on your will; but you cannot compromise with the result intended and professed. What then is the professed result? To admit a State into this Union. What is that Union? A confederation of States equal in sovereignty-capable of every thing which the constitution does not forbid, or authorize Congress to forbid. It is an equal Union, between parties equally sovereign. They were sovereign, independently of the Union. The object of the Union was common protection for the exercise of already existing sovereignty. The parties gave up a portion of that sovereignty to insure the remainder. As far as they gave it up by the common compact they have ceased to be sovereign. The Union provides the means of defending the residue: and it is into that Union that a new State is to come. By acceding to it, the new State is placed on the same footing with the original States. It accedes for the same purpose, i. e. protection for their unsurrendered sovereignty. If it comes in shorn of its beams crippled and disparaged beyond the original States, it is not into the original Union that it comes. For it is a different sort of Union. The first was Union "inter pares: " This is a Union between "disparates between giants and a dwarf-between power and feebleness-between full proportioned sovereignties and a miserable image of power-a thing which that very Union has shrunk and shrivelled from its just size, instead of preserving it in its true dimensions. It is into this Union," i. e. the Union of the Federal Constitution, that you are to admit, or refuse to admit. You can admit into no other. You cannot make the Union, as to the new State, what it is not as to the old; for then it is not this Union that you open for the entrance of a new party. If you make it enter into a new and additional compact, is it any longer the same Union? | jects. Vary that compact as to a new Stategive new energy to that political power so as to make it act with more force upon a new State than upon the old-make the will of those agents more effectually the arbiter of the fate of a new State than of the old, and it may be confidently said that the new State has not entered into this Union, but into another Union. How far the Union has been varied is another question. But that it has been varied is clear. If I am told that by the bill relative to Missouri, you do not legislate upon a new StateI answer that you do; and I answer further that it is immaterial whether you do or not. But it is upon Missouri, as a State, that your terms and conditions are to act. Until Missouri is a State, the terms and conditions are nothing. You legislate in the shape of terms and conditions, prospectively-and you so legislate upon it that when it comes into the Union it is to be bound by a contract degrading and diminishing its sovereignty, and is to be stripped of rights which the original parties to the Union did not consent to abandon, and which that Union (so far as depends upon it) takes under its protection and guarantee. Is the right to hold slaves a right which Massachusetts enjoys? If it is, Massachusetts is under this Union in a different character from Missouri. The compact of Union for it, is different from the same compact of Union for Missouri. The power of Congress is dif ferent-every thing which depends upon the Union is, in that respect, different. But it is immaterial whether you legislate for Missouri as a State or not. The effect of your legislation is to bring it into the Union with a portion of its sovereignty taken away. But it is a State which you are to admit. What is a State in the sense of the constitution? It is not a State in the general-but a State as you find it in the constitution. A State, generally, is a body politic or independent political society of men. But the State which you are to admit must be more or less than this political entity. What must it be? Ask the constitution. It shows what it means by a State by reference to the parties to it. It must be such a State as Massachusetts, Virginia, and the other members of the American confederacy-a State with full sovereignty except as the constitution restricts it. It is said that the word, "may," necessarily implies the right of prescribing the terms of admission. Those who maintain this are aware that there are no express words (such as "upon such terms and conditions as Congress shall We are told that admitting a State into the think fit") words which it was natural to expect Union is a compact. Yes-but what sort of a to find in the constitution, if the effect concompact? A compact that it shall be a mem-tended for were meant. They put it, therefore, ber of the Union, as the constitution has made on the word "may," and on that alone. it. You cannot new fashion it. Give to that word all the force you pleasemake a compact to admit, but when admitted what does it import? That Congress is not the original compact prevails. The Union is a bound to admit a new State into this Union. compact, with a provision of political power | Be it so for argument's sake. Does it follow You may |