Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/431

Rh Missouri Compromise. The resolution of March 2, 1821, for the admission of Missouri, provides "that the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution "of Missouri shall never be so construed as to permit the passing of an act depriving citizens of other states of any of their privileges under the Federal Constitution. Now the clause against which the opponents of slavery were contending, and against which this phrase of the resolution has been assumed to have been directed, is not the one thus numerically designated. Art. III., Sec. 26, consists of three unnumbered portions, the first prohibitory upon the legislature, and consisting of two clauses, the second permissive, in four clauses, the third mandatory, in two clauses. It is the first clause of this third portion that enjoins the general assembly to pass a law to prevent the immigration of free negroes. Eustis's resolution provided that "the clause forbidding free negroes" to enter the state should be withdrawn. The misleading designation first appears in a resolution offered in the House by S. Moore of Pennsylvania on February 2. Mr. Hodder traced its history through the contest over Clay's and Roberts's resolutions and Clay's joint committee to the final vote, in which the existing form was carried by a change of votes on the part of More and two other Pennsylvanian members and one from North Carolina. He expressed suspicions of deliberate misdescription, and made some effort to trace it to its source. The session was closed by remarks by Professor Macy of Iowa College, on the relations of Western history to general history, and on the points of comparison between westward migration in the Old World and that from the Old World to the New and to the West.

The last of the sessions devoted to papers, that of Saturday morning, was marked by one informal address in English history and one in the most recent period of American history, with ensuing discussion. Illness detained the other speakers. Professor Wilbur C. Abbott of Dartmouth described the results of an investigation into the history of the opposition in Parliament during the time of the American War, and especially in the Parliament of 1774— 1780. At first the opposition usually numbered only forty or fifty. By the beginning of 1776 it had increased to eighty or ninety. While the surrender of Burgoyne had no effect upon it, the news of the French alliance immediately added forty or fifty members. Speaking generally, it was not till this time that the country gentlemen began to go over. From this point the opposition steadily increased till Dunning's motion was carried. Dr. Abbott described the nature of the ministerial party and its resulting liability to sudden collapse, the influence of army officers discredited by the government be-