46 ment for the Territory of Oregon? and? though the proviso was in it? 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. Sir? we hear much of the annexation of Canada; and if there be any man, any of the Northern Democracy, or any one of the Tree-Soil 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 overspreading wing of an act of Congress. Sir, wherever there is a substantive good to be done; wherever there is a foot of land to be staid 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 unnecessarily 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, and subdue the sense of fraternal affection, patriotic love and
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