The republic. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1849-1853, 1850-03-15

alone remains -suspended and that consent must
be pronounced now never. say
Nothing prevents il now but want of agreement
among ourselves. Our harmony cannot increase
while this question remains open. We shall never
agree to admit California unless agree now.
Nor will California abide delay. do not say that
she contemplates independence; but, if she does
not il is because she does not anticipate rejection.
Do you say that she can have no motive! Consid-
err, then, her attitude if rejected. She needs con-
stiution legislature, and magistrates; she needs
titles to that golden domain of ours within her bor
ders-good titles, too; and you must give them on
your own terms, or she must take them without
your leave. She needs a mint, custom house,
wharves, hospitals, and institutions of learning;
she needs Qualifications, and roads, and railroads !;
she needs the protection OF an army and a navy; /;
either your stars and stripes must wave over her
ports and her fleets she must raise loft standard
for herself; she needs, at least, to know whether
you friends enemies and, finally she needs
what no American community can live without
sovereignty and independence; either just and
equal share of yours or sovereignty and indepen-
dence of her own.
Will you say that California could not aggran-
die herself by separation? Would it, then, be
mean ambition to set up within fifty years. on the
Pacific coast, monuments like those which we
| think two hundred years have been well spent in
establishing on the Atlantic coast?
Will you say that California has no ability to be-
come independent? She has the same moral ability
for enterprise that inheres in us, and that ability
| implies command of all physical means. She has
advantages of position. She is practically further
removed from you than England You cannot
| reach her by railroad, nor by unbroken steam nav
igaton. You can send no armies over the prairie,
the mountain and the desert, across the remote
| and narrow isthmus within foreign jurisdiction,
nor around the Cape of Storms. You may send a
! navy therc but she has only to open her mines,
| and she can seduce yodr navies and appropriate
| your floating bulwarks to her own defence. Let
| her only seize your domain within her borders,
and your commerce in her ports, and she will have
at once revenues and credit adequate to all her ne
cessies Besides, are we so moderate, and has
/ the world become just, that we have no rivals
and no enemies to lend their sympaties and aid to
compass the dismemberment of our empire?
! Try not the truth and fidelity of California at
least not now not yet Cherish her and indulge
! her until you have extended your settlements to
her borders, and bound her fast by railroads, and
canals, and telegraphs to your interests-unti her
afnities of intercourse established and habits
of loyalty are ixed-and then she can never be dis
| engaged.
! California would not go alone. Oregon, 50 init
mately allied to her, and yet SO loosely attached
to u.s. would GO also, and then at least the entire
Pacific coast with the western declvty the Sierra
Nevada, would be lost. II would not depend at all
on u.s. nor even on the mere forbearance OF Califor
MIA, how far eastward the long line across the tenn
perate should be drawn, which should separate
the republic of the Pacific from the republic of the
deities of the ancient Pantheon but his sceptre
mains. Commerce is the god of boundaries, and
no man now living can foretel his ultimate de-
cree.
But it is insisted that the admission of California
shall be attended by COMPROMISE Of questions
which have arisen out of SLAVERY!
! am opposed to any such compromise, in any
and all the forms in which il has been proposed,
because, while admitting the purity and the patri-
otism Of all from whom it is my misfortune to differ,
think all legislative compromises radically wrong
and essentially vicious, They involve the surren-
der of the exercise of judgment and conscience on
distinct and separate questions, at distinct and sep
arate times, with the indispensable advantages it
| affords for ascertaining truth. They involve re-
| decisions of the present ON questions prematurely
anticipated, and they usurpaton to future
| questions of the province OF future legislators
Sir, it seems to as If slavery had laid its para
! lying hand upon myself, and the blood were
coursing less freely than is its wont through my
veins, when endeayor TO suppose that such a com
promise has been effected, and my utterance for
ever is arrested upon all the great questions, social,
moral, and political arising out of subject i'm
portant, and as yet so incomprehensble. What
am 10 receive in this compromise? Freedom in
California. II is well il is noble acquisition; il
is worth a sacrifice. But what am 10 give up as
an equivalent A recognition Of the rdaim 10 per-
petuate slavery in the District of Columbia for
bearance towards more stringent laws concerning
| the arrest OF persons suspected OF being slaves
found in free States; forbearancc from the proviso
OF freedom in the charters Of new Territories None
Of the plans OF compromise offered demand less than
two and Of them insist all OF these conditions.
| some portion Of human rights in one region, for
The equivalent, then, Is, some portion of liberty,
liberty in another region. But California brings
gold and commerce well as freedom. ! am,
| then, TO surrender some portion of human freedom
in the District of Columbia and in East California
and New Mexico for the mixed consideration Of
liberty, gold, and power ON the Pacific coast.
This view oflegisatvc compromises is not nsb.
II has widely prevailed, and many of the State
stitutions interdict the introduction OF than
one subject into ono bill submitted for Legislative
| action
II was Of such compromises that Burke said in
of the ofes bursts Of even his majestic parlia
mentary cloquence: To'. Ia
"Far, far from the Commons of Great Britain be
all manner OF real vice. but ten thousand times fur
thcr from them, as far as from pole to pole, be the
whole tribe Of spurious, affected, counterfeit, and
| hypocriticai virtues These the things which
arc ten thousand times moro atwar with real virtue,
these are the things which are ten thousand times
more at war with real duty, than any vice known
1 by its name and distinguished by its proper char
| actcr,
"Far, far from US be that false and affected can
dor that s eterDally la treaty with crime-tbat half
virtue, which, like the ambiguous animal that flies
| about in the twilight of a compromise between day
and night, is, to just mans eye, an odious and
disgusting thing. There is no middle point, my
! lords In which the Commons Of Great Britain can
meet tyranny and oppression"
| But, sir, If could overcome my rcpugnance 10
compromises in general, ! shoudobect to this one,
on the ground of the inequality and incongrfy Of
the interests 10 be compromised. why, sir, ac-
/ cordinR 10 tho views have submitted, California
i ought TO como in. and must come in, whether sa.
very stands falls in the District OF Columbia;
whether slavery stands or falls IN New Mexico and
| Eastern Caliorna; and whether slavery stands
| or falls In The slave States. California ought 10
come in, being free State; and under the eircum-
stances of her conquest, her compact, her abandon
ment, her jusnhable and necessary establishment
| Of a constitution, and the inevitable dismcmbcr-
mcnt of the empire consequent upon her rejection
should have voted for her admission, even II she
/ had come a slave State, Caiiiornia ought to
come in, and must come in at all events. II is
! then, am independent paramount question. What,
then, these questions arising out OF slavery,
thus nterposeci but collateral questionsD They
unnecessary and incongruous, and therefore false
issues; not introduced dcsignedy indeed to defeat
that great policy, yet unayodsby tending to that
! end. i.ti flt ~ nr
But consent on my part would be disingenuous
and fraudulent, because the compromise would be
unavailing X is avowed by the honorable
1 Senator from South Carolina (Mr. CALHouN) that
nothing will satisfy the slave States bot comprol
misc that viii convince them that they can remain
! in the Onion consistently with their honor and
their safety. And Whist arc the concessions which
win have that effect, Here they arc IN the words
/ Of that Senator:
"Tho North must do justice, by conceding TO The
South cofal roht the acQuircd territory. and