8 ace of the Senate, means after all substantially what that recital meant as it stood before it was perfected, or else it means nothing tangible or worthy of consideration at all. What if the spirit, or even the letter, of the Compromise laws of 1850 did conflict with the Compromise of 1820? 1 he Compromise of 1820 was, by its very nature, a Compromise irfepealable and unchangeable, without a violation of honor, justice, and good faith. The Compromise of 1850, if it impaired the previous Compromise to the extent of the loss to free labor of one acre of the Territory of Nebraska, was either absolutely void, or ought, in all subse- qent legislation, to be deemed and held void. What if the spirit or the letter of the Com promise was a violation of the Compromise of 1820? Then, inasmuch as the Compromise of 1820 was inviolable, the attempted violation of it shows that the so-called Compromise of 1850 was to that extent not a Compromise at all, but a factitious, spurious, and pretented Compromise. What if the letter or the spirit of the Compromise of 1850 did supersede or impair, or fn any way, in any degree, conflict with the Compromise of 1820? Then that is a reason for abrogating, not the irrepealable and inviolable Compromise of 1820, but the spurious and pretended Compromise of 1850. Mr. President, why is this reason for the proposed abrogation of the Compromise of 1820 assigned in these bills at all? It is unnecessary. The assignment of a reason adds nothing to the force or Weight of the abrogation itself. Either the fact alleged as a reason is true or it is not true. If it be untrue, your asserting it here will not make it true. If it be true, it is apparent in the text of the law of 1850, without the aid of legislative exposition now. It is unusual. It is unparliamentary. The language of the lawgiver, whether the sovereign be Democratic, Republican, or Despotic, is always the same. It is mandatory, imperative. If the lawgiver explains at all in a statute the reason for it, the reason is that it is his pleasure—sic volo,'sic jubeo. Look at the Compromise of 1820. Does it plead an excuse for its commands? Look at the Compromise of 1850, drawn by the master-hand of our American Chatham. Does that bespeak your favor by a quibbling or shuffling apology ? Look at your own, now rejected, first Nebraska bill, which, by conclusive implication, saved the effect of the Missouri Compromise. Look at any other bill ever reported by the Committee on Territories. Look at any other bill now on your calendar. Examine all the laws on your statute books. Do you find any one bill or statute which ever came bowing, stooping, and wriggling into the Senate, pleading an excuse for its clear and explicit declaration of the sovereign and irresistible will of the American People? The departure from this habit in this solitary case betrays self-distrust, and an at tempt on the part of the bill to divert the public attention, to raise complex and immaterial issues, to perplex and bewilder and com- found the People by whom this transaction is to be reviewed. Look again at the vacillation, betrayed in the frequent changes of the structure of this apology. At first the recital told us- that the eighth section of the Compromise act of 1820 was superseded by the principles of the Comprbmise laws of 1850—as if any one had ever heard of a supersedeas of one local law by the mere principles of another local law, enacted for an altogether different region, thirty years afterwards. On another day we were told, by an amendment of the recital, that the Compromise of 1820 was not superseded by the Compromise of 1850 at all, but was only “inconsistent with” it — as if a local act which was irrepealable was now to be abrogated, because it was inconsistent with a subsequent enactment, which had no. application whatever within the region to which the first enactment was confined. On a third day the meaning ,of the recital was further and finally elucidated by an amendment, which declared that the first irrepealable act protecting Nebraska from'slavery was now declared “inoperative and void,” because it was inconsistent with the present purposes of Congress not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, But take this apology in whatever form it may be expressed, and test its logic by a simple process. The Jaw of 1820 secured free institutions in the regions acquired from France in 1803, by the wise and prudent foresight of the Congress of the United States. The law of 1850, on the contrary, committed the choice between free and slave institutions in New Mexico and Utah—Territories acquired from Mexico nearly fifty years afterward—to the interested cupidity or the caprice of their earliest and accidental occupants. Free Institutions and Slave Institutions are equal, but the interested cupidity of the pioneer is a wiser arbiter, and his judgment a surer safeguard, than the collective wisdom of the American People and the most solemn and time-honored statute of the American Congress. Therefore, let the law of freedom in the territory acquired from France be now annulled and abrogated, and let the fortunes and fate of Freedom and Slavery, in the region acquired from France, be, henceforward and forever, determined by the votes of some seven hundred camp followers around Fort Leavenworth, and the still smaller number of trappers, Government schoolmasters, and mechanics, who attend the Indians in their seasons of rest from hunting in the passes of the Rocky Mountains.' Sir, this syllogism may satisfy you and1 other Senators; but as for me, I must be content to adhere to the earlier system. Stare super antiquas vias. There is yet another difficulty in this new theory. Let it be granted that, in order to
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