Weekly national intelligencer., 1851-01-04

N Susceptible Of easy roIutau0n; fOr simple re-
ference 70 the yeas and nays on the passage in
Congress of the several measures thus denounced,
will show, beyond all question, that no one Of these
measures would have become laws without large
contribution Of Southern votes to its passage; and
that, therefore, the Legislation Of Congress at the
last session was no more controlled by dominant
majority adverse to the rights of the South than i
was by the votes of the Senators and Representa-
tives from the South itself.
II is equally demonstrable, if not by figures, by
irrefragabe facts, that, SO far from the legislation
referred TO aording evidence of determination on
the part Of majority Of Congress to destroy the
institution of slavery in the South, it affords eyl-
dence of directly the reverse. No power denied to
Congress by the Resolution of the Mississippi Con-
vention-the same in which originated the call OF
the Nashville Convention providing for call OF
General Convention of the People of that State IN
either of the events specified in that resolution, vlz
!" the passage by Congress of the Wmot Proviso, or
Of any law abolishing slavery in the District OF Co
lumbia, prohibiting the slave-trade between the
States s0as exercised by Congress during the
last session. Congress took no issue upon either OF
the questions which that Convention had raisec SO
far, indeed, from any aggression upon the peculiar
rights of the South by Congress, during its last
session, much was gained for those rights, in
what was done as well as what was not done by
Congress. No attempt was made to enact law
prohibiting the slave trade among the States though,
had it been made and succeeded, the Supreme Court
has, by decision upon case arising in the State
of Mississippi herself forestalled any act of that
character; having in that case decided that each
State has the exclusive power to permit or prohibit
the trade within her own limits and that no such
power belongs to Congress. With regard to the
Wilmot Proviso, also, though it had been incorpo-
rated at previous session in the act establishing
the Territorial Government of Oregon, yet majo-
rity in Congress did not, in the enactment at the
last session of laws for the Government of the Ter
ritories of Utah and New Mexico, exercise the
power by which slavery had been prohibited
in the Territory of Oregon. Neither was any
act passed, or sanctioned by either branch of
Congress, abolishing slavery in the District of Co
lumbia but, the contrary, decisive votes in each
branch Of Congress were given against it when
proposed; whilst, in addition to the old and inei-
cent law for carrying into effect the provision of the
Constitution for the recovery of fugitives from the
Slave States, Congress at the last Session enacted
another-and by the aid Of the votes of many of
those Members from non-slaveholding States who
are denounced in mass in the Preamble of the
Mississippi act as dominant majority regard
less of the rights Of the Slaveholding States, &c.
the effect of which enactment has been to put a
-, cLot~o clo
from the States in which they are held. If.there
be an exception to this statement-though we do
not remember to have heard of single one-it
only constitutes an exception to general fact.
There is, in Short according to our understand
ing of the NATTER nothing which the Southern States
could reasonably desre-nothing within the consti-
tutional power Of Congress which the South could
reasonably ask to be done or omitted-that Con-
gress did not do or omit at its last Session.
| Urnn this head we may cite the authority Of
Gen. HAMILTON, of South Carolina, the leader of
the first conflict of his State with the General Go
| vernment-the citizen selected, moreover, by Co.
vernon SEABRooK most worthy to succeed her
late great leader in the seat in the Senate which
his death had made yacant-who, in his late Letter
addressed to the People Of South Carolina, declares
his opinion to be in concurrence with that of ma
ority Of the People of all the States except South
Carolina that "neither one nor all of the mea-
sures" passed at the late Session of Congress af
ford justification for the disruption Of this Con-
federacy." And, more recently, the grave counsels
of another Carolinian, an eminent and a wise
statesman, (Mr. Po1NsETT,) addressed to his coun-
trymen, have shown, too conclusively for denial,
that there is nothing in the late action Of Congress
which any intelligent rational southron ought to
consider as calling for or justifying vindictive or
extra-consttutional action by any State States of
the South.
The act of the State of SOUTH CAROLINA makes
no statement of grievances, but merely general
allusion to "aggressons," placing its action solely
upon the ground Of the recommendation by the
Nashville Convention Of the call of Southern
Congress, and directing, in compliance Herewith,
an election of Members to State Conven-
ton to ratify whatever provision the SOUTHERN
CONGRESS may recommend for the " future safety
and independence" of the South Regardless of
the lessons Of history, Of the warnings of her wsest
statesmen, and of the welfare of the mass of her
citizens, this State, in appointing and directing
the appointment of Representatives in such Con-
gress, has taken step by which she has commit
ted the destines Of the State to an experiment Of