Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/362

352 lated position; but whatever influence it possessed among members of Congress, and upon public opinion, it employed in favor of this policy and against the compromise. In one respect this plan was weak. The population of New Mexico could not be compared with that of California, either in point of numbers or in point of character. In neither respect was it fit to form a state government. Military rule in a territory could be justified only as a temporary expedient, to be superseded as soon as possible by a legally constituted civil authority. The establishment of regular territorial governments in the newly acquired territories was therefore decidedly called for. Clay further objected to the President's policy that in other respects it stopped short of the requirements of the situation. As he expressed it in one of his numerous speeches on the subject: “Here are five bleeding wounds [counting them upon the fingers of his left hand]: first, there is California; there are the territories, second; there is the question of the boundary of Texas, the third; there is the fugitive-slave law, the fourth; and there is the question of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, fifth. What is the plan of the President? Is it to heal all these wounds? No such thing. It is only to heal one of the five, and to leave the other four to bleed more profusely than ever by the sole admission of California, even if it should produce death itself.” Whereupon Benton sarcastically remarked that Clay would have found more bleed-