Mr. Douglas supports the Compromise Measures of Henry Clay-Great Speech on the 13th and 14th of March-Speech in favor of the Omnibus Bill, June 3-The Nicholson Letter of General Cass-Mr. Douglas returns to Chicago-He is Denounced by the Local AuthoritiesHe beards the Lions in their Den-Speech to the Citizens of ChicagoIts Effect.

WHEN the Compromise measures of Mr. Clay were brought forward in 1850, Mr. Douglas supported them with zeal and vigor. On the 13th and 14th of March, he delivered a speech on the general territorial questions, which has scarcely been surpassed by any of his subsequent efforts. It was by far the ablest speech that had ever been delivered in the Senate by any western man. It was in this speech that Judge Douglas first enunciated the doctrine of which he has ever since been the most distinguished advocate, that it is the true Democratic principle in reference to the Territories, that each one shall be left to regulate its own local and domestic affairs in its own way.

In the beginning of this great speech, Senator Douglas showed that all the acts of the Tyler administration in reference to the annexation of Texas (including the proposed treaty with Mexico for that object, and the correspondence between our secretary of state on the one part, and Mr. King, minister to France and Mr. Murphy, chargé d'affaires

in the republic of Texas, on the other part), had been indig nantly and contemptuously rejected by the Senate; and that this had been done in order to repudiate and rebuke the administration of Mr Tyler, and in order that the Democratic party might come to the support of the annexation of Texas as they did come, and consummated the annexation upon broad, national grounds, elevated far above and totally disconnected from the question of slavery.

ORDINANCE OF 1787 HAD NO EFFECT ON SLAVERY.

A distinguished southern senator having said that the South had been deprived of its due share of the territories, Mr. Douglas responded, "What share had the South in the territories? or the North? I answer, none at all. The territories belong to the United States as one people, and are to be disposed of for the common benefit of all, according to the principles of the Constitution. No geographical section of the Union is entitled to any share of the territories. What becomes of the complaint of the senator, that the Ordinance of 1787 excluded the South entirely from that vast fertile region between the Ohio and the Mississippi? That ordinance was a dead letter. It did not make the country to which it applied, free from slavery. The States formed out of the territory northwest of the Ohio, did not become free by virtue of the Ordinance, nor in consequence of it. Those States became free by virtue of their own will, recorded in the fundamental laws of their own making. That is the source of their freedom. In all republican states, laws and ordinances are mere nullities, unless sustained by the hearts and intellects of the people for whom they are made, and by whom they are to be executed.

SLAVES IN ILLINCIS.

"The Ordinance of 1787 did the South no harm, and the North no good. Illinois, for instance, was a slave territory. Even in 1840, there were 331 slaves in Illinois. How came these slaves in Illinois? They were taken there under the Ordinance, and in defiance of it. The people of Illinois, while it was a territory, were mostly emigrants from the slaveholding States. But when their convention assembled at Kaskaskia in 1818, to form the constitution of the State of Illinois, although it was composed of slaveholders, yet they had become satisfied, from experience, that the climate and productions of Illinois were unfavorable to slave labor. They accordingly made provision for a gradual system of emancipation, by which the State should become eventually free. These facts show that the Ordinance had no practical effect upon slavery. Slavery existed under the Ordinance; and since the Ordinance has been suspended by the State governments, slavery has gradually disappeared under the operation of laws adopted and executed by the people themselves. A law passed by the national legislature to operate locally upon a people not represented, will always remain a dead letter, if it be in opposition to the wishes and interests of those who are to be affected by it.

"In regard to the effects of the Missouri Compromise on the question of slavery, I do not think that it had any practical effect on that question, one way or another: it neither curtailed nor extended slavery one inch."

A GLANCE AT THE FUTURE.

"We recognize the right of the South, in common with our right, to emigrate to the Territories with their property,

and there hold and enjoy it in subordination to the laws in force there. The senator from South Carolina desires such an amendment to the Constitution as shall stipulate that in all time to come, there shall be as many slaveholding States in the Union as there are States without slaves. The adoption and execution of such a provision would be an impossibility. We have a vast territory which is filling up with an industrious and enterprising population, large enough to form seventeen new States, one-half of which we may expect to see represented in this body during our day. Of these, four will be formed out of Oregon, five out of our late acquisition from Mexico, including the present State of California, and two out of Minnesota. Each of these will be free Territories and free States, whether Congress shall prohibit slavery in them or not. Where are you to find the slave territory with which to balance these seventeen free Territories? In Texas? If Texas should be divided into five States, at least three of them will in all probability be free."

Mr. Douglas then proceeded to advocate, at great length, the immediate admission of the State of California under her constitution; and concluded his speech by declaring that "this nation owes to the venerable senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) a debt of gratitude for his services to the Union on this occasion. The purity of his motives cannot be doubted. He has set the ball in motion which is to restore peace and harmony to the Union."

THE OMNIBUS BILL.

On the 3d of June, 1850, Mr. Douglas spoke in favor of the Omnibus Bill, and in the course of his remarks said: "In

respect to African slavery, the position that I have ever taken has been, that this, and all other questions relating to the domestic affairs and domestic policy of the Territories, ought to be left to the decision of the people themselves. I would therefore have much preferred that the bill should have remained as it was reported from the Committee on Territories, with no provision on the subject of slavery; and I do hope that that clause in the bill will be stricken out. It ought not to be there, because it is a violation of principle I do not see how we who have argued in favor of the right of the people to legislate for themselves on this question, can support such a provision without abandoning all the arguments which we urged in the Presidential campaign of 1848, and the principles set forth by the senator from Michigan in the Nicholson letter.

"And, sir, is an institution to be fixed upon a people in opposition to their unanimous opinion? I, for one, think that such ought not to be the case. I desire no provision whatever in respect to slavery in the Territories. I wish to leave the people of the Territories free to enact such laws as they please. But on this one point, I am not left to follow my own judgment, nor my own desire. I am to express the will of my constituents. My vote will be in accordance with their instructions."

We give, in a subsequent part of this work, the Nicholson letter referred to by Mr. Douglas, and commend it to the perusal of our readers. It will amply repay the time thus spent.

On the 6th of June, and also on the 26th, Mr. Douglas addressed the Senate in support of the Compromise measures.

ABOLITIONISM IN CHICAGO.

The Compromise measures of 1850 having been adopted by Congress, and that body having adjourned, Mr. Douglas