provided for by those resolutions to be formed out of the Territory of Texas. All that was manly, statesmanlike, and calculated to do good, because just. He went further; he condemned, and rightfully condemned, and in that he has shown a great firmness, the course of the North relative to the stipulations of the constitution for the restoration of fugitive slaves; but permit me to say, for I desire to be candid upon all subjects, that if the Senator, together with many friends on this side of the chamber, puts his confidence in the bill which has been reported here, further to extend the laws of Congress upon this subject, it will prove fallacious. It is impossible to execute any law of Congress until the people of the States shall coöperate.

I heard the gentleman with great pleasure say that he would not vote for the Wilmot Proviso, for he regarded such an act unnecessary, considering that Nature had already excluded slavery. As far as the new acquisitions are concerned, I am disposed to leave them to be disposed of as the hand of Nature shall determine. It is what I have always insisted upon. Leave that portion of a country more natural to a non-slaveholding population to be filled by that description of population: and leave that portion into which slavery would naturally go, to be filled by a slaveholding population - destroying artificial lines, though perhaps they may be better than none. Mr. Jefferson spoke like a prophet of the effect of the Missouri compromise line. I am willing to leave it for Nature to settle; and to organize governments for the Territories, giving all free scope to enter, and prepare themselves to participate in their privileges. We want, sir, nothing but justice. When the gentleman says he is willing to leave it to Nature, I understand he is willing to remove all impediments, whether real or imaginary. It is consummate folly to assert that the Mexican law, prohibiting slavery in California and New Mexico, is in force; and I have always regarded it so.

No man would feel more happy than myself to believe that this Union formed by our ancestors, should live forever. Looking back to the long course of forty years' service here, I have the consolation to believe that I have never done one act which would weaken it; that I have done full justice to all sections. And if I have ever been exposed to the imputation of a contrary motive, it is because I have been willing to defend my section from unconstitutional encroachments. But I cannot agree with the Senator from Massachusetts that this Union cannot be dissolved. Am I to understand him that no degree of oppression, no outrage, no broken faith, can produce the destruction of this Union? Why, sir, if that becomes a fixed fact, it will itself become the great instrument of producing oppression, outrage, and broken faith. No, sir, the Union can be broken. Great moral causes will break it if they go on, and it can only be preserved by justice, good faith, and a rigid adherence to the constitution.

Mr. WEBSTER. Mr. President, a single word in reply to the honorable member from South Carolina. My distance from the honorable member and the crowded state of the room prevented me from hearing the whole of his remarks. I have only one or two observations to make; and, to begin, I first notice the honorable gentleman's last remark. He asks me if I hold the breaking up of the Union, by any such thing as the voluntary secession of States, as an impossibility. I know, sir, this Union can be broken up; every government can be; and I admit that there may be such a degree of oppression as will warrant resistance and a forcible severance. That is revolution. Of that ultimate right of revolution I have not been speaking. I know that that law of necessity does exist. I forbear from going further, because I do not wish to run into a discussion of the nature of this Government. The honorable member and myself have broken lances sufficiently often before on that subject.

Mr. CALHOUN. I have no desire to do it now.

Mr. WEBSTER. I presume the gentleman has not, and I have quite as little. *The gentleman refers to the occasions on which these great acquisitions were made to territory on the Southern side. Why, undoubtedly wise and skilful public men, having an object to accomplish, may take advantage of occasions. Indian wars are an occasion; a for the occupation of Texse by the British

1

was an occasion; but when the occasion came, under the pressure of which, or under the justification of which the thing could be done, it was done,and done skilfully. Let me say one thing further; and that is, that if slavery were abolished, as it was supposed to have been, throughout all Mexico, before the revolution and the establishment of the Texan Government, then, if it were desirable to have possession of Texas by purchase, as a means of preventing its becoming a British possession, I suppose that object could have been secured by making it a free territory of the United States as well as a slave territory.

Sir, in my great desire not to prolong this debate, I have omitted what I intended to say upon a particular question under the motion of the honorable Senator from Missouri, proposing an amendment to the resolution of the honorable member from Illinois; and that is, upon the propriety and expediency of admitting California, under all circumstances, just as she is. The more general subjects involved in this question are now before the Senate under the resolutions of the honorable member from Kentucky. I will say that I feel under great obligations to that honorable member for introducing the subject, and for the very lucid speech which he made, and which has been so much read throughout the whole country. I am also under great obligations to the honorable member from Tennessee, for the light which he has shed upon this subject; and, in some respects, it will be seen that I differ very little from the leading subjects submitted by either of those honorable gentlemen.

No

Now, sir, when the direct question of the admission of California shall be before the Senate, I propose-but not before every other gentleman who has a wish to address the Senate, shall have gratified that desire to say something upon the boundaries of California, upon the constitution of California, and upon the expediency, under all the circumstances, of admitting her with that constitution.

Mr. CALHOUN. One word, and I have done; and that word is, that notwithstanding the acquisition of the vast territory of Texas represented by the Senator from Massachusetts, it is the fact that all that addition to our territory made it by no means equal to what the Northern States had excluded us from before that acquisition. The territory lying west between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains is three-fourths of the whole of Louisiana; and that which lies between the Mississippi and the Ohio, added to that, makes a much greater extent of territory than Florida, and Texas, and that portion of Louisiana that has fallen to our share.

Original Narrative

OF THE

BOSTON MASSACRE.

"A narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston, perpetrated on the evening of the fifth day of March, 1770, by soldiers of the Twenty-ninth Regiment, which, with the Fourteenth Regiment, was then quartered there: with some observations on the state of things prior to that catastrophe, originally printed by order of the Town of Boston, and sold by Elder & Gill, in Queen Street:" reprinted by J. Doggett, New York, and now sold by Redding & Co., No. 8, State Street, Boston, (in the immediate vicinity of the place where the tragedy occurred,) -1 Volume, 8vo, 120 pages, neatly bound in cloth, illustrated with an excellent copy of Paul Revere's picture of the event, and "a new and accurate Plan of the Town of Boston in New England"; complete price, fifty cents. The work contains the original official account of the Boston Massacre of the fifth of March, 1770. It was drawn up by a committee appointed by the town, consisting of the Honorable James Bowdoin, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Samuel Pemberton, Esq. The Report was submitted to a town meeting held at Faneuil Hall, by adjournment, on the 19th March, and was ordered to be printed. It was intended, principally, for circulation in England, and a vessel of war was chartered by the town, to take out copies to London. The present edition, with the exception of the subjoined "additional observations," which are obtained from a copy of this Work in the Library of Harvard College, is an exact reprint from an original, in the Library of the New York Historical Society, containing the full appendix, certificates, &c. To which is prefixed an account of the events of the few days preceding the massacre, drawn up by || the late Hon. Alden Bradford, and a Report, made by John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and others. The whole presenting, it is believed, the most complete and authentic account that has been published of the Massacre.