Page:Webster and Hayne's Celebrated Speeches.djvu/105

Rh enough, and that we should follow the Spartan maxim, “Improve, adorn what you have, seek no farther.” I think that it was in some observations that I made here on the three million loan bill, that I avowed that sentiment. In short, sir, the sentiment has been avowed quite as often, in as many places, and before as many assemblies, as any humble sentiments of mine ought to be avowed.

But now that, under certain conditions, Texas is in, with all her territories, as a slave state, with a solemn pledge that if she is divided into many states, those states may come in as slave states south of 36° 30′, how are we to deal with this subject? I know no way of honorable legislation, when the proper time comes for the enactment, but to carry into effect all that we have stipulated to do. I do not entirely agree with my honorable friend from Tennessee, (Mr. Bell,) that, as soon as the time comes when she is entitled to another representative, we should create a new state. The rule in regard to it I take to be this: that, when we have created new states out of territories, we have generally gone upon the idea that when there is population enough to form a state, sixty thousand, or some such thing, we would create a state; but it is quite a different thing when a state is divided, and two or more states made out of it. It does not follow, in such a case, that the same rule of apportionment should be applied. That, however, is a matter for the consideration of Congress, when the proper time arrives. I may not then be here. I may have no vote to give on the occasion; but I wish it to be distinctly understood to-day, that, according to my view of the matter, this government is solemnly pledged by law to create new states out of Texas, with her consent, when her population shall justify such a proceeding; and, so far as such states are formed out of Texan territory lying south of 36° 30′, to let them come in as slave states. That is the meaning of the resolution which our friends, the northern democracy, have left us to fulfil; and I, for one, mean to fulfil it, because I will not violate the faith of the government.

Now, as to California and New Mexico, I hold slavery to be excluded from those territories by a law even superior to that which admits and sanctions it in Texas. I mean the law of nature,—of physical geography,—the law of the formation of the earth. That law settles forever, with a strength beyond all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist in California or New Mexico. Understand me, sir; I mean slavery as we regard it; slaves in gross, of the colored race, transferable by sale and delivery like other property. I shall not discuss this point, but I leave it to the learned gentlemen who have undertaken to discuss it; but I suppose there is no slave of that description in California now. I understand that peonism, a sort of penal servitude, exists there, or rather a sort of voluntary sale of a man and his offspring for debt, as it is arranged and exists in some parts of California and New Mexico. But what I mean to say is, that African slavery, as we see it among us, is as utterly impossible to find itself, or to be found, in Mexico, as any other natural impossibility. California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their formation and scenery. They are composed of vast ridges of mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep valleys. The sides of these mountains are barren, entirely barren, their tops capped by perennial snow. There may be in California, now made free by its constitution, and no doubt there are, some tracts of valuable land. But it is not so in New Mexico. Pray, what is the evidence which every gentleman must have obtained on this subject, from information sought by himself or