tending to involve the nation in a war with that sister republic; as a gross violation of treaty-stipulations; as calculated to burden us with an enormous debt; as violating the Constitution of the United States, and as tending to sow the seeds of discontent and alienation among us, and thus to do more than all other causes put together to jeopard the peace and endanger the perpetuity of the Union. By no member of either house were the results which have followed that act more strongly foreshadowed. "This power of acquiring territory," says he, as early as January, 1845, "is exceedingly dangerous. If we are to construe the Constitution so as to give us unlimited power of acquisition, where is this spirit of aggrandizement to stop? If we acquire Texas, we may acquire Mexico. If this spirit is tolerated, it will prove in our case, as it has in all others, the bane of empire."

He voted against the Mexican War Bill, and has voted against all appropriations, as such, from that day to this. While her has not justified the course of Mexico, nor believed it free from cause of reproach or censure subsequent to the treaty of 1843, yet he believes that the war was commenced by the President without just cause, and in direct violation of the fundamental principles of the Constitution, and that we were the aggressors. He believes the preamble of the bill [see title, ROBERT C. WINTHROP] to be false as a whole, and false in each of its recitals. Speaking of the war toward the close of the last session, he says:

"I fear that thirst for dominion will overcome our love of justice; that a false sense of honor will lead us on in the work of human butchery, and that our young men, by tens of thousands, are yet to perish in the high places of the field,' to gratify the mad ambition of a weak and wicked administration. For one, I will wash my hands of 'blood unprofitably shed,' and do all in my power to avert the awful calamity which the prosecution of an unrighteous war may bring upon the nation. If Jefferson in his day was compelled to say, in view of the existence of slavery, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just,' what must be the apprehension of the Christian statesman when he contemplates this great republic, boasting of its freedom, exerting its powers to dismember a free republic in order to extend slavery over a territory now free-a territory as large as the old thirteen states?"

And, speaking of the Wilmot Proviso, he says:

The war was com

"We see in the case before us a fruitful source of discord. menced for the conquest of territory to convert into slave states. The most that the administration desire, in the first instance, is to acquire the territory. The South declare upon this floor, that if territory is acquired, it must be slave territory; that they will not submit to be surrounded by a cordon of free states. On the other hand, the North have resolved, and firmly resolved, that not another

foot of slave territory shall be added to the Union. Here, then, an issue is directly made, and I have no doubt but that the North will be found true to her principles when the day of trial comes. You may flatter yourselves with the prospect of buying up Northern votes; you may find men here who will betray their friends and attempt to commit their constituents; but when they return to their homes and submit their claims to their constituents, they will find an indignant and be trayed people ready to give them the traitor's due. I should like to know whether the honest yeomanry of Pennsylvania will allow their representatives on this floor to disregard their feelings with impunity, and trample the resolves of their Legislature in the dust?

"I tell you, Mr. Chairman, that the North will stand firm. You can not judge of the present by the past. Within two years there has been a radical change in public sentiment in the free states. The Texas outrage, followed by this iniquitous war, both for the extension of slavery, has brought the people to their senses. From the State of Maine, from the granite hills of New Hampshire, from united New England, the word has gone forth, and the glorious response from New York, from Pennsylvania, from Ohio, leaves no doubt on the subject of public feeling. The sentiment is deep-rooted; it is a strong religious conviction that slavery is a curse, and is at war with the best interests of our country and of humanity. A great moral revolution has commenced, and such revolutions can never go backward. They have seen this administration breaking through the barriers of the Constitution to sustain and extend slavery, and the people in the free states have resolved that the evil shall extend no further. I say to the South, in all frankness, you will find Northern sentiment immovable on this subject--' as firm as Nature, and as fixed as Fate;' and I will say to those Democrats of the North who are fawning around this weak administration, and betraying Northern interests, that they may pick the crumbs which fall from the executive table, 'You are treasuring up for yourselves wrath against the day of wrath.' You may league all your forces with those of the President; you may give him all the aid in your power in the prosecution of this war of conquest, that the free territory of Mexico may be brought into this Union to increase the slave power; but your labor will be fruitless. You may at this time meet with partial success; you may vote down the anti-slavery proviso, but it will rise again, and haunt you like the ghost of Banquo. Another Congress will be here before this subject can be finally disposed of, and, being more fresh from the people than yourselves, they will speak a different language. You may attempt another compromise with slavery, but the people will discard it. You may make a covenant with that institution, and bind yourselves to its support; but I tell you, in the strong language of the Hebrew prophet, Your covenant with Death shall be disannulled; your agreement with Hell shall not stand: when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.'"

Mr. Hudson claims for himself, with great justice, the virtue of industry in every station he has filled in life. He has always labored more or less on a farm, and now, in the vacation, devotes his time to agricultural pursuits.

Is

S a new member. He was born in the city of New York on the 25th of May, 1805. He is the son of John Duer, of that city, and Anne Duer, whose maiden name was Bunner, and who was the sister of the late Rudolph Bunner, of Oswego. John Duer, known as one of the ablest lawyers of the State of New York, is the son of William Duer, an Englishman by birth, who emigrated to this country, and married Catharine, the daughter of General William Alexander, commonly called Lord Sterling. William Duer, the grandfather of the member, was a colonel in the American army in the Revolutionary War. He was for some time chairman of the Committee of Safety in this state, a body which at that period exercised all the powers of government. He also represented this state in several Congresses. He is said to have been a man of brilliant talents and great eloquence. At the time when a certain intrigue was on foot to supersede Washington in the command of the army, this gentleman, being sick in bed, caused himself to be carried to the House, that he might vote against the proposition for that purpose.

William Duer, the present member, graduated at Columbia College in August, 1824. He delivered the valedictory oration at this Commencement.

He then studied law, and in 1828, immediately after his admission to the bar, removed from the city of New York to Oswego. After residing there six or seven months, he returned to the city of New York. In 1830 he published, in conjunction with Elijah Paine, of the city of New York, a work, in octavo volumes, on the Practice of the Courts of Common Law in the State of New York.

VOL. I.-N N

561

In 1832 he was a candidate for the State Assembly, in the city of New York, on the Adams, or National Republican ticket, and was defeated, with the rest of the ticket, by a large majority. In January, 1833, he removed from the city of New York to New Orleans. In the spring of that year he was admitted to the bar there, and commenced the practice of the law. In 1835 he was married to Lucy, daughter of Beverley Chew, of New Orleans, one of the oldest residents of that city, for many years Collector of the Port, and afterward President of the Canal Bank. He has three sons and four daughters living. His wife is his first cousin, her mother (now dead) having been the sister of John Duer.

Shortly after his marriage, William Duer again removed from New Orleans to Oswego, in the State of New York, where he has since resided and practiced his profession. In Novem ber, 1839, he was elected, on the Whig ticket, by a majority of twenty-two, from Oswego, to the House of Assembly in the State Legislature, which commenced its session on the 1st of January, 1840. Some months previous to the session of this Legislature, it is known that serious difficulties had arisen between the landlord and tenants of that part of the manor of Rensselaerwick situated in the county of Albany. The execution of the process of the law was forcibly resisted; the tenants collected together in large numbers, and matters assumed an aspect so threatening that the governor was compelled to call out a military force. The disturbances were then quieted without bloodshed.

The governor, in his message, after giving a brief history of the disturbances, took occasion to speak of the tenures existing in the manor of Rensselaerwick, which he strongly condemned, and recommended the adoption of some measure which should "assimilate the tenures in question to those which experience had proved to be more accordant with the principles of republican government."

This portion of the governor's message, together with numerous petitions from the tenants, was referred to a select committee, of which Mr. Duer was chairman. This committee, on the 23d of March, 1840, made a report at length, through their chairman, its author. The specific relief sought by the tenants consisted in the abolition of certain remedies for the collection

of rent, not generally, but where tenures of the description referred to existed, while it was not proposed to substitute any other remedies in place of those abolished. Against this proposition the committee reported as contrary to the Constitution of the United States, and as unjust, inasmuch as its effect would be greatly to impair the value of the landlord's property, without making him any compensation. They took the ground that no change should be made in the tenures, unless upon adequate compensation by the tenants to the landlord. But they expressed the opinion that if it were made to appear that the public good clearly required such change, the Legislature was not destitute of power to make it upon just compensation being allowed to the landlord. They did not, however, recommend any such action on the ground that the exercise of such power, if the Legislature possessed it, was "a matter of great delicacy, and not to be resorted to unless in a case of necessity." They recommended the appointment of commissioners to inquire into and report a state of facts to the next Legislature, and also to endeavor to effect a compromise between the landlord and tenants. A bill for this purpose was passed by the Legislature. The report will be found in the sixth volume of Assembly Documents for 1840, No. 271. The subject afterward acquired additional interest in consequence of the extension of these difficulties to other counties.

We have entered with some minuteness into these facts, because the report to which we have referred was subsequently made the subject of criticisms believed by its author to be unjust and unfair, it having been represented that the committee had recommended that the state should lease and sell the domain of the landlords, and thus raise a fund to be devoted to internal improvement, or other purposes. A statement to this effect, made by Colonel Young in the Senate, drew forth a reply from Mr. Duer, which was published in the Albany Evening Journal somewhere in January, 1846.

In 1840 Mr. Duer was again elected to the Legislature. In the ensuing session he was appointed chairman of the Committee on Literature. As a member of that committee, he exerted himself, among other things, in favor of the passage of a resolution for the printing of the Journals of the New York Provincial Legislature, and Convention, and Committee of Safety, from