Page:Webster and Hayne's Celebrated Speeches.djvu/107

Rh felt the necessity of establishing a government for the territory of Oregon, and though the proviso was there, he knew it would be entirely nugatory; and, since it must be entirely nugatory, since it took away no right, no describable, no estimable, no weighable or tangible right of the south, he said he would sign the bill for the sake of enacting a law to form a government in that territory, and let that entirely useless, and, in that connection, entirely senseless, proviso remain. For myself, I will say that we hear much of the annexation of Canada; and if there be any man, any of the northern democracy, or any one of the freesoil party, who supposes it necessary to insert a Wilmot proviso in a territorial government for New Mexico, that man will of course be of opinion that it is necessary to protect the everlasting snows of Canada from the foot of slavery by the same overpowering wing of an act of Congress. Sir, wherever there is a particular good to be done, wherever there is a foot of land to be stayed back from becoming slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle of the exclusion of slavery. I am pledged to it from the year 1837; I have been pledged to it again and again; and I will perform those pledges; but I will not do a thing unnecessary, that wounds the feelings of others, or that does disgrace to my own understanding.

Mr. President, in the excited times in which we live, there is found to exist a state of crimination and recrimination between the north and south. There are lists of grievances produced by each; and those grievances, real or supposed, alienate the minds of one portion of the country from the other, exasperate the feelings, subdue the sense of fraternal connection, and patriotic love, and mutual regard. I shall bestow a little attention, sir, upon these various grievances produced on the one side and on the other. I begin with the complaints of the south. I will not answer, further than I have, the general statements of the honorable senator from South Carolina, that the north has grown upon the south in consequence of the manner of administering this government, in the collecting of its revenues, and so forth. These are disputed topics, and I have no inclination to enter into them. But I will state these complaints, especially one complaint of the south, which has, in my opinion, just foundation; and that is, that there has been found at the north, among individuals, and among the legislators of the north, a disinclination to perform, fully, their constitutional duties in regard to the return of persons bound to service, who have escaped into the free states. In that respect, it is my judgment that the south is right, and the north is wrong. Every member of every northern legislature is bound, like every other officer in the country, by oath, to support the constitution of the United States; and this article of the constitution, which says to these states, they shall deliver up fugitives from service, is as binding in honor and conscience as any other article. No man fulfils his duty in any legislature who sets himself to find excuses, evasions, escapes from this constitutional obligation. I have always thought that the constitution addressed itself to the legislatures of the states or to the states themselves. It says that those persons escaping to other states shall be delivered up, and I confess I have always been of the opinion that it was an injunction upon the states themselves. When it is said that a person escaping into another state, and becoming therefore within the jurisdiction of that state, shall be delivered up, it seems to me the import of the passage is, that the state itself, in obedience to the constitution, shall cause him to be delivered up. That is my judgment. I have always entertained that opinion, and I