LETTER 10 HON. WILLIAM NELSON, M. C., ON MR. WEBSTER'S SPEECH, FROM WILLIAM JAY. New-Yorit : WILLIAM HARNED, 61 JOHN STREET. Price 2 cts. single; 184 cts. a dozen; $100 a hundred. - 1850, LETTER. NEW YORK, 16th March, 1850. MY DEAR SIR:-Availing myself of your kind invitation to give you my sentiments at any time, on topics occupying the attention of Congress, I wrote to you a few weeks ago, in relation to the compromise proposed by Mr. Clay. Since the date of that letter, you, and I, and indeed the whole nation, have been astounded by the strange course pursued in the Senate by Mr. Webster. I inquire not into his motives; to his own master he standeth or falleth: but certainly it must be admitted by friends and foes, that his recent somerset is one of the boldest and most extraordinary ever thrown by a political tumbler. I will not inflict upon you a minute examination of his lamentable speech, but I will take the liberty to call your attention to a few of its prominent points. Gen. Cass frankly confessed that, with regard to the Wilmot proviso, "a change had come over him"; but Mr. Webster, while his personal identity is almost wholly destroyed, while scarcely a fragment of the former man remains, is under the hallucination that he is the same Daniel Webster as before, and while denouncing and ridiculing the proviso, professes to be as much devoted to its principle as ever! He now pours contempt, not only upon legislative instructions, but also upon legislative expressions of hostility to JAY'S LETTER ON the extension of slavery. "I should be unwilling to receive from the Legislature of Massachusetts any instructions to present resolutions expressive of any opinions whatever, on the subject of slavery, for two reasons: first, I do not consider that the Legislature of Massachusetts has anything to do with it; and next, I do not consider that I, as her representative, have anything to do with it." On the 1st of March, 1847, he read in the Senate certain strong anti-slavery resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature, and announced that they had been passed unanimously. Did he then rebuke the Legislature of his State, for meddling with what was none of their business? Hear him: "I THANK her (Massachusetts) for it, and am PROUD of her, for she has denounced the whole object for which our armies are now traversing the mountains of Mexico. If anything is certain, it is that the sentiment of the whole North is utterly opposed to the acquisition of territory to be formed into new slaveholding States." - Cong. Globe, p. 555. In 1819, Mr. Webster, as one of the committee, submitted to a Boston meeting two resolutions, viz. : "That the Congress of the United States possess the constitutional power, upon the admission of any new State created beyond the limits of the original territory of the United States, to make the prohibition of the further extension of slavery or involuntary servitude in such new State a condition of its admission;" and that "It is just and expedient that this power should be exercised by Congress upon the admission of ALL new States erected beyond the original limits of the United States." Now Mr. Webster, as the representative of Massachusetts in Congress, does not consider that he has anything to do with the subject of slavery! When it was ascertained, during the war, that new territory would be acquired, and when it was openly avowed that it was to become slave territory, the House of Representatives passed Mr. Wilmot's proviso, expressly excluding slavery from the territory to be thus acquired. This, as we all know, led to a violent political agitation. What part did Mr. Webster take in this agitation? In 1847, he ad |