tlemen may know something of him. He was a tobacco-planter, Sir, at Mount Vernon. The resolutions passed on that occasion declared the intention of the meeting to refrain from purchasing any slaves and their determination to have nothing to do with the slave-trade- because the introduction of slaves into this country prevented its settlement by free whites. This, then, was the opinion in Virginia at that time; and it was the opinion in Georgia too.

Thank God, though all should fail, there is an infallible depository of truth, and it lives once a year for three months in a little chamber below us! We can go there. Now I understand my duty here to be to ascertain what constitutional power we have; and, when we have ascertained that, without reference to what the Supreme Court may do, for they have yet furnished no guide on the subject, we are to take it for granted that they will concur with us. If the Court does not concur with us, I agree with gentlemen who have been so lost in their encomiums upon that Court that their decision, whether right or wrong, controls no action. But we have not hitherto endeavored to ascertain what the Supreme Court would do. I wish them to ascertain in what mode this wonderful response is to be obtained-not from that Delphic Oracle, but from that infallible divinity,

the Supreme Court. How is it to be done? A gentleman starts from Baltimore, in Maryland, with a dozen black men who have partus sequitur ventrem burnt into their skins and souls all over; he takes them to California, three thousand miles off. Now I don't know how it may be in other parts of the world, but I know that in the State of Ohio it is ordained that the law is carried to every man's door. What then is the admirable contrivance in this bill by which we can get at the meaning of the Constitution? We pray for it, we agonize for it, we make a law for it, and that it may be speedily known-for, if not speedily known, it may as well never be known; if slavery goes there and remains there for one year, according to all experience, it is eternally. Let it but plant its roots there, and the next thing you will hear of will be the earnest appeals about the right of property. It will be said: "The Senate did not say we had no right to come here. The House of Representatives, a body of gentlemen elected from all parts of the country on account of their sagacity and legal attainments, did not prohibit us from coming here. I thought I had a right to come here; the Senator from South Carolina said I had a right to come here; the honorable Senator from Georgia said I had a right to come here; his colleagues said it was a right secured to me somewhere high up in the clouds and

not belonging to the world; the Senator from Mississippi said it was the ordinance of Almighty God am I not then to enjoy the privileges thus so fully secured to me? I have property here; several of my women have borne children, who have partus sequitur ventrem born with them; they are my property." Thus the appeal will be made to their fellow-citizens around them; and it will be asked whether you are prepared to strike down the property which the settler in those territories has thus acquired. That will be the case unless the negro from Baltimore, when he gets there and sees the Peons there,-slaves not by partus sequitur ventrem, but by a much better title, a verdict before a justice of the peace,-should determine to avail himself of the admirable facilities afforded him by this bill for gaining his freedom.

Suppose my friend from New Hampshire, when he goes home, gets up a meeting and collects a fund for the purpose of sending a missionary after these men ; and when the missionary arrives there he proposes to hold a prayer-meeting-he gets up a meeting as they used to do in Yankee times, "for the improvement of gifts." He goes to the negro quarter of this gentleman from Baltimore, and says: "Come, I want brother Cuffee; it is true he is a son of Ham, but I want to instruct him that he is free." I am very much inclined to think that the missionary would fare very much as one

did in South Carolina at the hands of him of Baltimore. So, you see, the negro is to start all at once into a free Anglo-Saxon in California; the blood of liberty flowing in every vein, and its divine impulses throbbing in his heart. He is to say: "I am free ; I am a Californian; I bring the right of habeas corpus with me." Well, he is brought up on a writ of habeas corpus-before whom? Very likely one of those gentlemen who have been proclaiming that slavery has a right to go on there; for such are the men that Mr. Polk is likely to appoint. He has prejudged the case. On the faith of his opinion the slave has been brought there: what can he do? There is his recorded judgment printed in your Congressional Report; what will he say? "You are a slave. Mr. Calhoun was right. Judge Berrien, of Georgia, a profound lawyer, whom I know well, was right. I know these gentlemen well; their opinion is entitled to the highest authority, and in the face of it, it does not become me to say that you are free. So, boy, go to your master; you belong to the class partus sequitur ventrem ; you are not quite enough of a Saxon." What then is to be done by this bill? Oh! a writ of error or appeal can come to the Supreme Court of the United States. How? The negro, if he is to be treated like a white taking out an appeal, must give bonds in double the value of the subjectmatter in dispute. And what is that? If you

consider it the mercantile value of the negro, it may be perhaps one thousand or two thousand dollars. But he cannot have the appeal according to this bill, unless the value of the thing in controversy amounts to the value of two thousand dollars. But, then, there comes in this ideality of personal liberty what is it worth? Nothing at all-says the Senator from South Carolina-to this fellow, who is better without it. And under all this complexity of legal quibbling and litigation, it is expected that the negro will stand there and contend with his master, and, coming on to Washington, will prosecute his appeal two years before the Supreme Court, enjoying the opportunity of visiting his old friends about Baltimore !