dangers to our institutions of government. The imprisoned winds are let loose. The East, the West, the North, and the stormy South, all combine to throw the whole ocean into commotion, to top its billows to the skies, and to disclose its profoundest depth. I do not expect to hold or to be fit to hold the helm in this combat of the political elements; but I have a duty to perform, and I mean to perform it with fidelity—not without a sense of the surrounding dangers, but not without hope. I have a part to act, not for my own security or safety, for I am looking out for no fragment upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be, but for the good of the whole and the preservation of the whole; and there is that which will press me to my duty during this struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear, or shall not appear, after many days. I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. 'Hear me for my cause.' I speak to-day out of a solicitous and anxious heart, for the restoration to the country of that quiet and that harmony which make the blessings of the Union so rich and so dear to us all."

Mr. WEBSTER then proceeded to give a history of some of the difficulties in respect to slavery; spoke of the conquest of California; of the gold mines there; of the Constitution offered to Congress as the ground of admission into the Union, which Constitution contains the prohibition of slavery, which was not satisfactory to the South; of the existence of slavery in other portions and ages of the world, and of the difference of opinion. felt respecting the institution, by the North and the South; of the unhappy division in the Methodist church, growing out of the difference of opinion on this subject. He also spoke of the existence of slavery in this country; of the views entertained of it at the time the Constitution was formed, by both North and South; and of the subsequent change of views in both sections; of the influence of cotton cultivation; of the annexation of Texas; of his opinion on the admission of slavery in the Territories; of the Wilmot proviso; of his opposition to the admission of new territory; of the exclusion of slavery by climate and the laws of nature; of the grievances of the North and of the South; of the complaint of the South, "that there has been found at the North among individuals and among the Legisla

tures at the North a disinclination to perform fully their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service, who have escaped into the free States. In that respect it is my judgment that the South is right, and the North is wrong." He also spoke of resolutions emanating from Legislatures at the North, and sent here to us, not only on the subject of slavery in this District, but sometimes recommending Congress to consider the means of abolishing slavery in the States. He said that "it has become, in my opinion, quite too common a practice for the State Legislatures to present resolutions on all subjects, and to instruct us here on all subjects." He said, in regard to abolition societies, that "he does not think them useful." He spoke of the violent language used in Congress with disapprobation; of slave representation; of the imprisonment of free blacks who go South in Northern vessels; of Mr. HOAR's mission; of the difficulties in the way of secession; of the gift of Virginia to the United States in the cession of territory; of his hopes that the Union may continue.

This speech, one of the ablest ever made by Mr. WEBSTER, was intended by him to be catholic and liberal, and by catholic and liberal men in every part of the country it was well received, but not by the abolitionists. He had voted not to place in the Territorial bills the Wilmot proviso, and hence he incurred the censure of the abolition wing of the Whig party. In allusion to this in a subsequent speech, delivered June 17, he said: "When I see gentlemen from my own part of the country, no doubt from motives of the highest character, and for most conscientious purposes, not concurring in any of these great questions with myself, I am aware that I am taking on myself an uncommon degree of responsibility." He adds: "It is a great emergency, a great exigency, that this country is placed in." In relation to this censure, he remarks: "Now, sir, I do not take the trouble to answer things of this sort that appear in the public press; I know it would be useless."

He closed his speech as follows: "Sir, my object is peace. My object is reconciliation. My purpose is not to make up a case for the North, or to make up a case for the South. My object is not to continue useless and irritating controversies. I am against agitation, North and South. I am against local

ideas North or South, and against all narrow and local contests. I am an American, and I know no locality in America: that is my country. My heart, my sentiment, my judgment demand of me, that I shall pursue such a course as shall promote the good and the harmony of the whole country. This I shall do, God willing, to the end of the chapter."

MR. CLAY'S SPEECH.

"MR. PRESIDENT: In the progress of this debate, it has been again and again argued, that perfect tranquillity reigns throughout the country, and that there is no disturbance threatening its peace, endangering its safety, but that which was produced by busy, restless politicians. It has been maintained that the surface of the public mind is perfectly smooth, and undisturbed by a single billow. I most heartily wish I could concur in this picture of general tranquillity that has been drawn upon both sides of the Senate. I am no alarmist; nor, I thank God, at the advanced age at which his providence has been pleased to allow me to reach, am I very easily alarmed by any human event. But I totally misread the signs of the times, if there be that state of profound peace and quiet, that absence of all just cause of apprehension of future danger to this Confederacy, which appears to be entertained by some other Senators. Mr. President, all the tendencies of the times, I lament to say, are towards disquietude, if not more fatal consequences. When before, in the midst of profound peace with all the nations of the earth, have we seen a convention, representing a considerable portion of one great part of the Republic, meet to deliberate about measures of future safety in connection with great interests of that quarter of the country? When before have we seen, not one, but more-some half a dozen-legislative bodies solemnly resolving that if any one of these measures-the admission of California, the adoption of the Wilmot proviso, of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia-should be adopted by Congress, measures of an extreme character, for the safety of the great interests to which I refer, in a particular section of the country, would be resorted to? For years, this subject of the abolition of slavery, even within this District of Co

lumbia, small as is the number of slaves here, has been a source of constant irritation and disquiet. So of the subject of the recovery of fugitive slaves who have escaped from their lawful owners; not as a mere border contest, as has been supposedalthough there, undoubtedly, it has given rise to more irritation than in other portions of the Union-but everywhere through the slaveholding country it has been felt as a great evil, a great wrong, which required the intervention of Congressional power. But these two subjects, unpleasant as has been the agitation to which they have given rise, are nothing in comparison to those which have sprung out of the acquisitions recently made from the republic of Mexico. These are not only great and leading causes of just apprehension as respects the future, but all the minor circumstances of the day intimate danger ahead, whatever be its final issue and consequence. may

Mr. President, I will not dwell upon other concomitant causes, all having the same tendency, and all well calculated to awaken, to arouse us-if, as I hope the fact is, we are all of us sincerely desirous of preserving this Union-to arouse us to dangers which really exist, without underrating them upon the one hand, or magnifying them upon the other."

In reply to Mr. HALE, Mr. CLAY, in another speech, July 26, 1850, said: "But I stand up here for this measure, and I do not want the Senator to deal in declamation. I ask him what right is sacrificed by the North in this measure? Let him tell me if the North does not get almost every thing, and the South nothing but her honor—her exemption from usurped authority to the Texas land, which I have mentioned, together with the fugitive slave proposition, and an exemption from agitation on the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia. I do not want general broad-cast declamation, but specifications. Let us meet them as men, point upon point, argument upon argument. Show us the power here to which Northern sacrifices are made. Show what sacrifices, what is sacrificed by the North in this bill. That is what I want."

The compromise resolutions of Mr. CLAY, and the report of the Select Committee of Thirteen, to whom the whole subject had been referred, were in the main sustained by both Houses of Congress, but not in form. Instead of one bill, separate bills

were brought in and passed. California was admitted as a State, notwithstanding no territorial government had been established over her, and notwithstanding the Constitution prohibited slavery. Eighteen Southern Senators voted against her admission; and ten Senators presented a protest against it, on the ground that the portion of the inhabitants of California, who acted in the premises, did so without authority, and, in doing so, made an odious discrimination against the property of fifteen slaveholding States; on the ground that the bill defeats the right of the slaveholding States to a common or equal enjoyment of the territory of the Union; on the ground that "to vote for the bill would be to agree to a principle that may exclude forever, as it does now, the States which we represent, from all enjoyment of the common territory of the Union"; and also on other grounds. This protest the majority of the Senate refused to admit into its journal, twenty-two voting against admitting it, and nineteen in favor. The bill to estab-. lish a territorial government over New Mexico and Utah, with power to be admitted into the Union either with slavery or without slavery, was passed, ten Northern Senators voting against it. The fugitive slave law was passed, twelve Northern Senators voting against it. The Texas boundary bill was passed by a vote of thirty to twenty. The bill for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia was also passed.

In urging the Senate to pass these bills, Mr. CLAY, in his great speech, July 26, 1850, said: "Will you go home and leave all in disorder, confusion-all unsettled, all open? The contentions and agitations of the past will be increased and augmented by the agitations resulting from our neglect to decide them. Sir, we shall stand condemned by all human judgment below; and, of that above, it is not for me to speak. We shall stand condemned in our own consciences, by our own constituents, and by our own country. ** The bill may be defeated. It is possible that, for the chastisements of our sins or transgressions, the rod of Providence may be applied to us, may be still suspended over us. But if defeated, it will be a triumph of ultraism and impracticability; a triumph of the most extraordinary conjunction of extremes; a victory won by abolitionism n; a victory won by free-soilism; the victory of discord