Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/424

 and that principle lies at the root of agitation; and from that all the tumult and excitements of the country must arise. That is the only principle I can perceive. We are told by Southern, as well as Northern gentlemen, those who are for it, and those who are against it, that slavery will never be extended to that Territory, that it will never go there; but it is the principle of non-intervention that it is desired to establish. Sir, we have done well under the intervention of the Missouri Compromise, if the gentlemen so call it, in other Territories; and, I adjure you, when there is so much involved, not to press this matter too far. What is to be the consequence? If it is not in embryo, my suggestion will not make it so. It has been suggested elsewhere, and I may repeat it here, what is to be the effect of this measure if adopted, and you repeal the Missouri Compromise? The South is to gain nothing by it; for honorable gentlemen from the South, and especially the junior Senator from Virginia [Mr. Hunter], characterize it as a miserable, trifling little measure. Then, sir, is the South to be propitiated or benefited by the conferring upon her of a miserable, trifling little measure? Will that compensate the South for her uneasiness? Will it allay the agitation of the North? Will it preserve the union of these States? Will it sustain the Democratic or the Whig party in their organizations? No, sir, they all go to the wall. What is to be the effect on this Government? It is to be most ruinous and fatal to the future harmony and well-being of the country. I think that the measure itself would be useless. If you establish intervention, you make nothing by that. But what will be the consequence in the minds of the people? They have a veneration for that Compromise. They have a respect and reverence for it, from its antiquity and the associations connected with it, and repeated references to it that seem to suggest that it marked the boundaries of free and slave territory. They have no respect for it as a compact—I do not care what you call it—but as a line, defining certain rights and privileges to the different sections of the Union. The abstractions which you indulge in here can never satisfy the people that there is not something in it. Abrogate it or disannul it, and you exasperate the public mind. It is not necessary that reason should accompany excitement. Feeling is enough to agitate without much reason, and that will be the great prompter on this occasion. My word for it, we shall realize scenes of agitation which are rumbling in the distance now.

I have heard it said, and may as well remark it now, that the Abolitionists and Free-Soilers, to a certain extent, will affiliate with the weaker political party at the North, the Whigs, and will make a fair contest with the Democrats. If they throw this question in the scale, and the Democrats do not, they will preponderate. Then how are the Democrats to sustain themselves under this pressure? Suppose the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, or the repeal of the Compromise of 1850 is proposed, and the Democrats oppose it, they will meet with the objection that it is not more sacred than the Missouri Compromise, and the repeal will be urged before the people; and we shall see our House of Representatives with a preponderating power of Abolitionism, the principles of which will triumph. Every Representative who votes for this measure will be prostrated; he can not come back, or, if he comes back, he wilt be pledged to the repeal of a measure fraught with so many blessings of peace to the country. With all the fancied benefits of non-intervention, they can not overbalance the disastrous consequences that must ensue to our institutions.