The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1856-10-08

VIC PEOposiSlou 10 repeal Lao MlSS0ur
|. Compromise was presented, and I ha
: been influenced by pro-slavery conside
: ations alone, / should have said "no, /.
it stand.'' My logic leads me to quit
an opposite conclusion from that of man
gentlemen on this point; and will te
: you my reason. Every human institr
tion, to endure, must have this basis
: utility. In the common phraseolog
of the day, it. must pay. The institu
tion Of slavery stands like every othe
human institution, upon the sole prin
eiple of its ut lity, or in other words, it
profit. The question of profit is deter
mined, not as the wise creatures who
call themselves legislators, suppose, by
acts of legislation, but by climate and
soil.
When the wise men who inserted the
Missouri Compromise in the statute
book found that the public mind was
then, very much like it is now, exaspera
ted to fury upon the slavery question,
they quietly got together in the night,
entered into a stipulation as politicians,
not as legislators, but as men who meant
TO quiet the country, and they put the
political arrangement of few politi-
clans in the shape of law, and called it
the Missouri Compromise. They knew
when they put it there that it had no
obligation of law. They stamped upon
its brow the death warrant of the very
article they were incorporating into a
law, for it purported to be eternal,
whereas, every law in the statute book
can be repealed the next day after its
enactment,if the peoples representatives
choose to repeal it. They knew they
were lcgislating outside of the Constitu-
ton, but they thought they were doir g
thing that would be harmless in its
character, and they did it for the p1r-
pose of quieting the public agitation of
the moment. What did they mean by
it? just about this was their conver-
sation in the closet at night, when the
reat and wise men of that period deba-
ted the matter:-Mr. Clay would say
to=Northern gee.lemes, -ftyou tuUw ali
experience shows that slavery on this
contiient, on account of the fierce eli
mate that attends the Northwestern
coast, cannot be profitable beyond SO
deg. so min. north latitude, aud because
it cannot be profitable, it will never go
there, whether there be a law to aid or
to retard its march," As the declara-
tion of this fact, they propose to limit
slavery where the climate limited it,
and they barely embodied in the form
of Legislative provision recognition
of "a law of nature. Whether that en-
aetment stand or fall, makes not the
least odds from the beginning to the
end, with regard to the extension Or
contraction of slavery. If slavery were
found profitable up to that line, it was
known it would. go there. If it were
not found profitable nearer than FIVE de-
degrees below that line, it would stop
there. 1 come now to the point which
1 particularly urge 10 this convention,
aud to which especially call the atten-
tion of my fellow citizens of the free
States. 1 have already said that sla-
very is kept or rejected as an institution
according to its prof bleness or unp-of-
aud the question of profit is
by soil aud climate. There
is a natural barrier beyond which it can
not go, whether there be any law on the
subject or not. Not so with the spread |
of free population. The Missouri Com |
promise line operated as q scarecrow to |
keep North of the line the whole tide |
of population from the free States who
wanted to settle within the Jurisdiction
of free States, and not to go within
slave State jurisdiction. Every Yankee
with his tin cup, who did not want to
settle in a slave State went North of
that line. He took it for granted that
all Territory south of the line was to be
slave territory, and as he did not want
to live among slaves he kept North.
Thus, the Imitation was on the white
not the black. The law
was no limitation against the negro, be-
cause he could not go North of the line,
law or no law; theclimate stopped him;
but the law did impose limitation on
the white settlers, because they could
20 South of that if the law were not
there. Hence by the removal of the
Missouri Compromise line, larger
space of country has been opened to the
Of people from the free States
than there was before. Now they can
go around the upper end of Texas, oc-
cupy the whole broadside and centre
surface of the Territory of New Mexico.
They have actually gone $50 miles
south of the line in the lower end of
California. There is nothing to prevent
the whole population of the North from
sweeping the whole region from the
north eastern end of the Free States to
the Gulf of Mexico, and thereby out
fapkiDg the Slave States. . You have
this increase of area over which the free
population can spread without the in-
terposition of the blackman: By taking
:avav the line. Won remove what was an