Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/611

 habits; their exposure to inroads and wars of savage tribes; and the solemn stipulations of the treaty by which we acquired dominion over them — impose upon the United States the imperative obligation of extending to them protection, and of providing for them government and laws suited to their condition. Congress will fail in the performance of a high duty, if it do not give, or attempt to give to them, the benefit of such protection, government, and laws. They are not now, and for a long time to come may not be, prepared for state government. The territorial form, for the present, is best suited to their condition. A bill has been reported by the committee on territories, dividing all the territory acquired from Mexico, not comprehended within the limits of California, into two territories, under the names of Now Mexico and Utah, and proposing for each a territorial government.

"The committee recommend to the senate the establishment of those territorial governments; and, in order more certainly to secure that desirable object, they also recommend that the bill for their establishment be incorporated in the bill for the admission of California, and that, united together, they both be passed.

"The combination of the two measures in the same bill is objected to on various grounds. It is said that they are incongruous, and have no necessary connection with each other. A majority of the committee think otherwise. The object of both measures is the establishment of a government suited to the conditions, respectively, of the proposed new state and of the new territories. Prior to their transfer to the United States, they both formed a part of Mexico, where they stood in equal relations to the government of that republic. They were both ceded to the United States by the same treaty. And, in the same article of that treaty, the United States engaged to protect and govern both. Common in their origin, common in their alienation from one foreign government to another, common in their wants of good government, and conterminous in some of their boundaries, and alike in many particulars of physical condition, they have nearly every thing in common in the relation in which they stand to the rest of the Union. There is, then, a general fitness and propriety in extending the parental care of government to both in common. If California, by a sudden and extraordinary augmentation of population, has advanced so rapidly as to mature for herself a state government, that furnishes no reason why the less fortunate territories of New Mexico and Utah should be abandoned and left ungoverned by the United States, or should be disconnected with California, which, although she has organized for herself a state government, must, legally and constitutionally, be regarded as a territory until she is actually admitted as a state into the Union.

"It is further objected that, by combining the two measures in the same bill, members who may be willing to vote for one, and unwilling to vote for the other, would be placed in an embarrassing condition. They would be constrained, it is urged, to take or reject both. On the other hand, there are other members who would be willing to vote for both united, but would feel themselves constrained to vote against the California bill if it stood alone. Each