New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-05-10

present difficulties are the same which the found
ers of the Government had to compose; but in
what they did, be will hardly find any support for
this pretended Constitutional right to take slaves
into the Territories. While the Federal COnyen-
ton was sitting, the Continental Congress passed
an ordinance pcremptorily excluding slaves from
all the territory then belonging to the United
States; and among the earliest acts of the new
Congress was one confirming this ordinance and
this exclusion Of slavchodng from the Terri
tories. SO, under the authority Of an early
act of Congress continuing in force in the District
of Columbia, an act of the Maryland Legislature,
shareholders are prohibited from bringing their
slaves into that District except in the case OF
transient visitors, and any slave so brought into
the District and kept there year becomes emit
tied TO his freedom Certainly the authors of these
acts never dreamed of the Constitutional right
which figures so largely in Senator Dayiss resolu-
tions, and on which he SO peremptOriy insists
without, however, pointing out the section or
clause of the Constitution that contains it.
The telegraphc summary of Mr.. Davis's speech
is rather obscure Indeed the report states, at its
conclusion, that much of the speech was inaudble.
| We shall look therefore with some interest tor the
speech as written out by the speaker himself
| Especially we should like to know if 1t contained
m assertion of the right of the States to revive at
Measure the African saye-trade. This seems to
be implied by that sentence of the summary IN
which the speaker is represented as denying that
the General Government has power to limit the
importations of the States. Possibly, however,
this passage refers not to the importation OF slaves
from Africa, but to the Interstate slave-trade
We are no more friendly than Mr.. Davis himself
TO the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty; but it
does not very fair to press the case OF Kansas
as going to show that an attempt to carry that
doctrine into practice must necessarily be attended
by civil war. Ii must be admitted that If the
squatter Sovereignty principle had been allowed
fair PLAY, there would have been no trouble III
Kansas. The Free Labor party would have very
quietly settled the question, and at very early
day. by legislating Slavery out OF the Territory
The whole trouble there arose, not from any prac'
teal difficulty in the working of the Squatter
Sovereignty doctrine but from the interference oi
the Missouri shareholders and of the Government
at Washington to defeat the wishes Of
majority of the squatters, and to deprive them OF
the free exercise of the right of suffrage. The
same game was played in Kansas which Mr. DAVIS
and his fire-eating friends are now attempting to
play with the whole UniOn-that of frightening or
coercinc the Free-labor majority into submitting
to the rule of handful of shareholders. That
game may succeed so far as the platform and can
didate of the Democratic party are concerned.
Whether it succeed with the people at large il
quite another question. Judging from the case Of
Kansas, we should say not.