is in favor of the measure. Its success is certain, if we do not decline the reciprocity asked for by this bill.

When the Senator from Maryland said that the navigation of the St. Lawrence was useless to us, he could hardly have been aware that ship - canals have been constructed around the falls of Niagara, and other points below, to connect the great lakes with the Atlantic Ocean by way of the St. Lawrence, and that vessels of three hundred and fifty tons pass freely through these internal channels of communication. During the last summer, two of our revenue vessels passed from Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, through the St. Lawrence, to the Atlantic. When our ships can go to Quebec by sea and meet vessels from our northwestern States, there can be no doubt that large quantities of the products of those States will be carried, in summer, spring, and autumn, in this direction, by our own vessels, to Europe. If this bill becomes a law, I have no hesitation in predicting that vessels at no distant day will be laden with wheat in Chicago, Green Bay, Detroit, and Cleveland, and unlade in Liverpool. Ship-owners, producers, all will be greatly benefited by this free commerce, which will have an advantage in avoiding transshipment between the point of embarkation and the sea, or the foreign market. If the result is to affect in any way producers in the Middle States, as Kentucky in the West, and Maryland and Virginia on the Atlantic, it will be to relieve them from competition in our own markets with the wheat-growers of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin; and I greatly err if gentlemen from the wheat-growing States do not find themselves acting in direct contravention of the interests of their constituents

in opposing this measure. In any point of view under which the subject can be considered, the opening of the St. Lawrence will be of incalculable benefit. It is, indeed, the only outlet of the Northwest to the sea for vessels of any magnitude, the only outlet of this kind they can ever

have; for, with all the facilities for internal communication

New York possesses, a ship-canal through her territory is opposed by physical obstacles too serious to be overcome. I believe the adoption of this great measure the free navigation of the St. Lawrence depends on the passage of this bill. If the reciprocity it provides for is refused, we cannot expect that Canada will grant us what she considers as a boon, what we claim as a right, and what all must concede to be a privilege of inestimable value. On the contrary, if the liberal course she has pursued is met by an illiberal spirit in us, I fear she will be compelled, in self-defence, to resort to her old system of differential duties, and to continue the restriction on navigation. There is a strong party in Canada in favor of this course. I have already alluded to the anti-liberal party. I have quoted their recent petition to the Queen, in favor of discriminating duties on our products. And, sir, I greatly fear, if this bill is defeated, that we shall put a weapon into their hands to be wielded to our serious annoyance and injury. To withhold, therefore, a just measure of reciprocity mutually advantageous, as I verily believe, to both parties, would not only be exceedingly narrow in policy on our part, but, like all selfishness, it would defeat itself, and result in a loss of benefits we already enjoy. These benefits, as I have already shown, are: first, equal duties in Canada on American and British goods; and, second, a market for at least three millions of dollars in value of the products of our industry.

Mr. DAYTON. Will the Senator allow me to interrupt him? The statement of facts he makes is important; and I desire to know on what authority he says that our manufactured articles are received in Canada on the same terms as those of Great Britain.

I state it on the authority of the Canadian tariff, which I shall be happy to show the Senator from New Jersey; and I will add, that large quantities of our manufactures are carried into Canada for consumption, -iron castings, coarse cottons, and a variety of articles sent from the NewEngland States, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. To these

States the increased intercourse proposed by this bill will be of great importance. The prospective benefit which we should reject by a narrow policy is the free navigation of the St. Lawrence, -one of the highest prizes offered to the commercial enterprise of the country for many years. It will also carry with it the application, which we have always contended for, of a principle of the greatest value in international intercourse, a a principle generally conceded in Europe since the report of Baron Von Humboldt,

the right

of riparian states to an outlet to the sea by the water-courses on which they border. These seem to me to be advantages which far outweigh in importance any considerations of pecuniary profit to be drawn from a close computation of the number of bushels of wheat which may be reciprocally received and exported; though, even on this narrow ground, I trust I have shown that we are not likely to be losers by the competition.

There is another view of the subject, which, I confess, weighs greatly with me. The liberal party in Canada has been struggling for years to obtain the measure of political and commercial freedom to which they believe every community of men to be fairly entitled. Commercial freedom they have secured, -not fully, but so far as to give them the regulation of the impost; political freedom, so far as to give the popular voice a control over all cardinal subjects of internal administration and external intercourse. The first use they have made of this partial independence of the mother-country is to tender to us the most liberal terms of commercial exchange. They have extended to us these benefits without equivalent. We have enjoyed them for nearly two years with great advantage. They now ask equality in exchanging a few agricultural productions common to both countries. Sir, I should deeply regret that the United States, powerful and populous as they are, should withhold from a comparatively weak and dependent neighbor a privilege claimed on grounds so fair in themselves, and so en

tirely in accordance with the liberal principles by which we profess to be governed. It would be but a poor encouragement to a country adopting our political maxims to some extent, and carrying them into the administration of her own commercial affairs, to be driven from the liberal policy she has espoused into the old system of exclusion; to be thus checked at the very outset in her attempts to cast off, the shackles which she has regarded as the greatest impediment to her prosperity; to be forced to this alternative, too, by us, the country, above all others, most interested in the establishment and maintenance of an enlightened policy in government and in commerce.

TERRITORIES ACQUIRED FROM MEXICO.

THE speech which follows the last made by Mr. Dix in the Senate was delivered on the 28th February, 1849, three days before the adjournment of Congress. The question before the Senate, presented in a variety of forms, was the institution of governments for the territories acquired from Mexico, - a question embarrassed throughout by the determination of the Senators from the slave States to extend slavery to those territories, and by a majority of the Senators from the free States to guard, by an express prohibition, against what they deemed a moral and political evil, and the national dishonor of restoring it where it had been formally abolished.

I REGRET to be under the necessity of asking the indulgence of the Senate at this late period of the session; but I feel it my duty to make some remarks upon the amendment offered by the Senator from Wisconsin, and the general subject to which it relates. I regret also to be under the necessity of discussing the question of providing a government for California, in the form under which it is presented to us, in an amendment to an appropriation bill. Independently of this objection, I have considered it from the beginning a measure of too great importance to be disposed of in this incidental manner. The proposition of the Senator from Tennessee, also in the form of an amendment to this bill, was almost ruled out of this body, upon the ground that it was incongruous and out of place. It received in the end but four votes. I consider this amendment equally irrelevant and misplaced.

The amendment of the Senator from Tennessee proposed to admit California and New Mexico into the Union as a State. The amendment of the Senator from Wisconsin arms the President with extraordinary powers to govern these terri