has won for him from so many who never admired him before, is evidence enough that the slave-breeding and slave-trading interest, so powerful over all our political and commercial affairs, can endure to have slavery stigmatized-for a consideration. The patrons and allies of that great interest are not moving heaven and earth for the sake of a mere sentiment; and we can not persuade ourselves that Mr. Webster himself really regards the movement as so intended. No, the tone in which the prohibition of slavery is resisted by and in behalf of the parties interested in the extension of slavery, is not by any means the tone of men who are merely afraid that their self-respect, after having passed the ordeal unharmed so many times, will be damaged by one more reenactment of the ordinance of 1787; it is rather the tone of men who are contending with their utmost strength for what the Senator calls a "describable, estimable, weighable and tangible" interest. The fact is (and we are confident it is not without an effort that he himself has succeeded in ignoring the obvious fact,) that this intense and desperate struggle against the prohibition of slavery is for the purpose of increasing the market value of slave property, and for the purpose of preventing that ruinous depression in the price of human flesh which must otherwise take place at no very distant period. There is an immense commercial interest at the bottom of this agitation for slavery-an interest which affects directly or indirectly the entire commerce of the Union. Hence comes the desperateness of the struggle against justice; the Hotspur spirit is stimulated not merely by the sentiment of honor, but by the auri sacra fames. Hence come these projects, now for a Nashville Convention; and now for an armed emigration of chivalrous adventurers, marching their slave coffles across the continent and forcing slavery into California. Hence come the threats of civil war and of the dissolution of the Union-threats uttered in Congress itself with great seriousness, and with great effect upon the nerves of ancient politicians.

We do not charge Mr. Webster with any duplicity in this matter, or with any intentional apostasy from his principles. We disavow all partnership with the men who have denounced him in Faneuil Hall-some of them men whose malediction will help him more than it will harm him in the state of Massachusetts. But we believe that under a bias not difficult to be explained, he has deceived himself in regard to the importance of the question, and has been led to take a position altogether discreditable to his character as a statesman. Forgetting that the deliberate and desperate earnestness with which the slaveholding interest demands the extension of slavery, is significant of the momentous results which that demand involves, he has permitted himself to be terrified by it as if there were some imminent danger which must be averted at any sacrifice. He has been flattered with the sug

gestion that he is the man to mediate in this great conflict, and to save the Union and the country. And thus he has first convinced himself, and then has undertaken to convince the Senate and the public, that there is really nothing at issue which is worth contending for.

But has he not made out his case? Is there not, as he says, a "natural impossibility" which supersedes the necessity of any law against slavery in our new territories? No; he has proved nothing. His theory that there are certain countries where slavery should be prohibited by law, and certain other countries where slavery need not be prohibited by human legislation-the philosophy which teaches him that under certain conditions of physical geography it is quite a work of supererogation to forbid the buying and selling of human beings and the holding and using them as cattle-is the most transparent kind of sophistry. The same sort of "natural impossibility" on which Mr. Webster relies to exclude slavery from the newly conquered territories, exists in large portions of Virginia, of the Carolinas, and of Georgia. The state of Tennessee is half covered over with the same kind of "natural impossibility." Less than a moiety of the soil of the slaveholding states admits of the profitable employment of slave labor. Give to the hill country of the South-give to the green slopes and the deep receding valleys of those Alpine ridges such a law as Mr. Webster will not give to our new territories; proclaim that no tear of a bondman shall mingle with those bright streams, and that no shriek of a mother torn from her children shall wake those echoes; "re-enact the will of God" there, excluding slavery as the climate and the soil have excluded the culture of cotton and the cane;-and how soon would all those inland regions of the South bloom with a beauty far beyond the beauty of our own New England! Nay what is it that excludes slavery at this moment from Mr. Webster's proud free state of Massachusetts? It is law only-such law as the Senator will not give to these territories. Take away from Massachusetts the organic law in her declaration of rights, and in less than a twelvemonth, neither the mountains of Berkshire nor the sandy isle of Nantucket would remain unpolluted with slavery.

Mr. Webster seems to think that slavery can have no existence except where slave labor can find profitable and permanent employment. He ought to have remembered that in a new country, where labor ordinarily bears a high value in comparison with the means of subsistence, the great convenience of having slaves for domestic service may create a demand for them. He ought to have remembered too that where the climate and the soil forbid the culture of cotton and sugar, there may nevertheless be a valuable growth of slaves to be employed on distant plantations under a more burning sky. Ships can not be built on the moun

tains of New Hampshire; but the ship timber there has its value, every knee and spar, because it can be used in the shipyards of Massachusetts Bay. How notorious is it that the value of the slave crop, as it may be called, in Virginia and Maryland, fluctuates with the value of the cotton crop in Georgia and Alabama. How notorious is it that of every dollar paid by the consumer of American cotton and sugar, a certain portion goes to support the production of slaves in regions where cotton will not grow, just as surely as a certain other portion goes to support the conversion of slave labor into cotton in other regions where the raising of cotton is more lucrative than the raising of slaves.

But the Honorable Senator places his argument on still higher ground, that of the alleged peculiarities in the physical geography of the territories in question. He entrenches himself impregnably, as he thinks, among the sky-piercing mountains, and in the wild gorges of New Mexico and Eastern California. He would have us believe that the whole realm about which we are contending, is simply worthless, incapable of sustaining any considerable population. How obvious the answer that he does not know whereof he affirms. This part of the speech reminds us of another speech made in the House of Representatives by a distinguished gentleman, since transferred to the Senate. In that very able speech, the materials of which were collected with great labor and put together with no slight skill, the whole territory from Texas to the Pacific was characterized precisely as Mr. Webster now characterizes all that lies this side of the Sierra Nevada. Only two years ago it was asserted in Congress with great confidence and on the highest authority, that what is now THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA Could never be of any great importance; that its population would not probably at any future time exceed two hundred thousand; and that if acquired according to the treaty which was understood to have been concluded, but which had not then been ratified, it must be wholly secluded and cut off from all other parts of the United States, Oregon not excepted. Who can tell us that, five years hence, Mr. Webster's opinion, now so confidently given, will not be equally ludicrous? Indeed his opinion seems to us to be little else than a vague reminiscence of impressions derived from the now "obsolete idea" which was the policy of the whig party two years ago. But not to dwell upon the caution given by the experience of these last two years, let us look upon the map of New Mexico and Eastern California, imperfectly explored as that vast region has been. What do we see? Is it quite certain that a country drained by such streams-rivers for length like the Rhine and the Danube, or like the Indus and the Ganges-is altogether worthless? And besides, do not the same travelers on whose report is founded the belief that the country in question is not worth the

trouble which it will cost to give it free institutions, tell us also that all along their route, not only in the valley of the del Norte but in the valley of the Gila, there are the scattered traces of a once numerous population, and the mysterious monuments of a civilization that flourished and perhaps perished before the age of Columbus? So the traveler in the valley of Upper Egypt, through the rocky passes of Edom, among the blasted hills of Palestine, over the broad parched plains of the Euphrates and the Tigris, finds himself standing amid the monuments of perished grandeur and upon the graves of buried empires, with miserable barbarism and desolation spread around him. If the high and awful trust of laying the foundation of new states in those now desolate realms, were to-day committed to this great New England statesman-if to him it were entrusted to prescribe the organic laws under which a new race should begin to occupy with new sciences and arts, and with a new political order, that theater of the world's earliest history-would he point to the Asphaltic lake of Sodom, to the peaks of Sinai and Horeb with the "waste and howling wilderness" around them, to the wild gorges of Idumea and of Lebanon, to the necessity of artificial irrigation on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, and tell us that in a country so barren and worthless there is no need of any law to protect the primary and universal rights of men, or to deliver the captive from the hand of power? But look upon the map again. Involuntarily the eye runs along the line of the great water courses, and looks for openings in the ridges that divide the continent. Why? Because the entire enterprise and energy of the American people is waiting, as it were, for the signal to precipitate itself upon the work of constructing a railway that shall stretch from the bank of the Mississippi to the shore of the Pacific. That railway, when once it shall have been constructed, will not only be the principal line of communication between the Atlantic states and those of the Pacific, but one chief thoroughfare of the identical commerce between Western Europe and Eastern Asia, which has always been so potent in its influence on the destiny of the world. That railway will bear along its iron track, a commerce richer by far than that which freighted the navies and the caravans of Solomon; richer than that which built up Tyre and Tadmor in the ages of old, and left the traces of its magnificence upon the precipitous cliffs of Petra; richer than that which adorned with more than imperial splendor the Venice and Genoa of the middle ages; nor less enriching than that which within the last century has poured into the lap of Britain "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind." Who can forget that if such a railway is constructed, it must pass directly through that same region which Mr. Webster pronounces too poor, too deficient in all capability of improvement, to deserve even so small a gift as that of a law to

protect it against the introduction of a barbarous, impoverishing, demoralizing, and intrinsically unrighteous structure of society?

Unhappily, there remains, at the moment at which we are writing, little reason to doubt that governments will be organized for the territories by act of Congress, without any provision against slavery. This being done, governors, judges, secretaries, marshals and other functionaries, must be appointed for the territories by the President and Senate. Of such territorial officers two out of three, according to all precedent, must be sent from the slaveholding states. Thus from Mr. Webster's attempt to save the country, and to outdo the great compromiser, it will probably result that the first American slaves taken to New Mexico, will be taken thither by federal officers at the expense of the federal government. And this is called, "non-intervention," or permitting the people of the territories to determine the question of slavery for themselves. The only non-intervention that is really such, is that which has been proposed by President Taylor.

The question, however, will not be settled even then. Of course the organization of a territorial government will provide for a legislative body representing the people of the territory, but subject to the supreme legislative power of Congress. The people of New Mexico are said to be, at present, earnestly and with great unanimity opposed to the introduction of slavery. Suppose then that an act is passed by the territorial legislature, declaring that slavery does not exist upon the soil of New Mexico, and ordaining that every slave brought into that territory shall be free. Will not the agitation be instantly renewed on behalf of the great slave trading interest? Will it not be demanded that Congress shall pronounce its veto upon such an act? Or suppose on the other hand that the territorial legislation recognizes slaves as property, and invests the master with absolute power. Will not the agitation be renewed in behalf of freedom? Such a question as that which now agitates the country is not so easily disposed of as some men think. The question whether New Mexico is to be a free state or a slave state, is not settled by the mere evasion which Mr. Webster proposes. Organize a government for it, according to the method of evasion, with no provision for or against the institution of slavery; and the question whether slavery shall be lawful there, instead of being settled, is not even postponed. The slaveholding interest, in all its various ramifications and dependencies, is still struggling to open a new market there for slaves, and thus to obtain new securities for the indefinite extension and permanence of slavery; and on the other hand, justice, humanity, and all enlightened and enlarged sentiments of patriotism, are still crying out against the consummation of the outrage. The adoption of the measure to which Mr. Webster has lent himself, will indeed be hailed as a victory on the one side; and on the