"The whole country is miserably watered. Large districts have no water at all. The streams are small, and at great distances apart. One day we marched on the road from Monclova to Parras thirty-five miles without water, a pretty severe day's marching for infantry.

"Grass is very scarce, and indeed there is none at all in many regions for miles square. Its place is supplied with pricklypear and thorny bushes. There is not one acre in two hundred, more probably not one in five hundred, of all the land we have seen in Mexico, which can ever be cultivated; the greater portion of it is the most desolate region I could ever have imagined. The pure granite hills of New England are a paradise to it, for they are without the thorny briers and venomous reptiles which infest the barbed barrenness of Mexico. The good land and cultivated spots in Mexico are but dots on the map. Were it not that it takes so very little to support a Mexican, and that the land which is cultivated yields its produce with little labor, it would be surprising how its sparse population is sustained. All the towns we have visited, with perhaps the exception of Parras, are depopulating, as is also the whole country.

"The people are on a par with their land. One in two hundred or five hundred is rich, and lives like a nabob; the rest are peons, or servants sold for debt, who work for their masters, and are as subservient as the slaves of the South, and look like Indians, and, indeed, are not more capable of self-government. One man, Jacobus Sanchez, owns three fourths of all the land our column has passed over in Mexico. We are told we have seen the best part of Northern Mexico; if so, the whole of it is not worth much.

"I came to Mexico in favor of getting or taking enough of it to pay the expenses of the war. I now doubt whether all Northern Mexico is worth the expenses of our column of three thousand men. The expenses of the war must be enormous; we have paid enormous prices for every thing, much beyond the usual prices of the country."

There it is. That's all North Mexico; and New Mexico is not the better part of it.

Sir, there is a recent traveller, not unfriendly to the United States, if we may judge from his work, for he speaks

well of us everywhere; an Englishman, named Ruxton. He gives an account of the morals and the manners of the population of New Mexico. And, Mr. President and Senators, I shall take leave to introduce you to these soon to be your respected fellow-citizens of New Mexico:

"It is remarkable that, although existing from the earliest times of the colonization of New Mexico, a period of two centuries, in a state of continual hostility with the numerous savage tribes of Indians who surround their territory, and in constant insecurity of life and property from their attacks, being also far removed from the enervating influences of large cities, and, in their isolated situation, entirely dependent upon their own resources, the inhabitants are totally destitute of those qualities which, for the above reasons, we might naturally have expected to distinguish them, and are as deficient in energy of character and physical courage as they are in all the moral and intellectual qualities. In their social state but one degree removed from the veriest savages, they might take a lesson even from these in morality and the conventional decencies of life. Imposing no restraint on their passions, a shameless and universal concubinage exists, and a total disregard of morality, to which it would be impossible to find a parallel in any country calling itself civilized. A want of honorable principle, and consummate duplicity and treachery, characterize all their dealings. Liars by nature, they are treacherous and faithless to their friends, cowardly and cringing to their enemies; cruel, as all cowards are, they unite savage ferocity with their want of animal courage; as an example of which, their recent massacre of Governor Bent, and other Americans, may be given, one of a hundred instances."

These, Sir, are soon to be our beloved countrymen!

Mr. President, for a good many years I have struggled in opposition to every thing which I thought tended to strengthen the arm of executive power. I think it is growing more and more formidable every day. And I think that by yielding to it in this, as in other instances, we give it a strength which it will be difficult hereafter to resist. I think that it

is nothing less than the fear of executive power which induces us to acquiesce in the acquisition of territory; fear, fear, and nothing else.

In the little part which I have acted in public life, it has been my purpose to maintain the people of the United States, what the Constitution designed to make them, one people, one in interest, one in character, and one in political feeling. If we depart from that, we break it all up. What sympathy can there be between the people of Mexico and California and the inhabitants of the Valley of the Mississippi and the Eastern States in the choice of a President? Do they know the same man? Do they concur in any general constitutional principles? Not at all.

Arbitrary governments may have territories and distant possessions, because arbitrary governments may rule them by different laws and different systems. Russia may rule in the Ukraine and the provinces of the Caucasus and Kamtschatka by different codes, ordinances, or ukases. We can do no such thing. They must be of us, part of us, or else strangers.

I think I see that in progress which will disfigure and deform the Constitution. While these territories remain territories, they will be a trouble and an annoyance; they will draw after them vast expenses; they will probably require as many troops as we have maintained during the last twenty years to

end them against the Indian tribes.

We must maintain an army at that immense distance. When they shall become States, they will be still more likely to give us trouble..

I think I see a course adopted which is likely to turn the Constitution of the land into a deformed monster, into a curse rather than a blessing; in fact, a frame of an unequal government, not founded on popular representation, not founded on equality, but on the grossest inequality; and I think that this process will go on, or that there is danger that it will go on, until this Union shall fall to pieces. I resist it, to-day and always! Whoever falters or whoever flies, I continue the contest!

I know, Sir, that all the portents are discouraging. Would to God I could auspicate good influences! Would to God that those who think with me, and myself, could hope for stronger support! Would that we could stand where we desire to stand! I see the signs are sinister. But with few, or alone, my position is fixed. If there were time, I would gladly awaken the country. I believe the country might be awakened, although it may be too late. For myself, supported or unsupported, by the blessing of God, I shall do my duty. I see well enough all the adverse indications. But I am sustained by a deep and a conscientious sense of duty; and while supported by that feeling, and while such great interests are at stake, I defy auguries, and ask no omen but my country's cause!

[IN the course of the first session of the Thirtieth Congress, a bill passed the House of Representatives to organize a government for the Territory of Oregon. This bill received several amendments on its passage through the Senate, and among them one moved by Mr. Douglass of Illinois, on the 10th of August, by which the eighth section of the law of the 6th of March, 1820, for the admission of Missouri, was revived and adopted, as a part of the bill, and declared to be "in full force, and binding, for the future organization of the territories of the United States, in the same sense and with the same understanding with which it was originally adopted."

however, first, upon the question as it is presented to us, as a parliamentary question; and secondly, upon the general political questions involved in the debate.

As a question of parliamentary proceeding, I understand the case to be this. The House of Representatives sent us a bill for the establishment of a territorial government in Oregon; and no motion has been made in the Senate to strike out any part of that bill. The bill purporting to respect Oregon, simply and alone, has not been the subject of any objection in this branch of the legislature. The Senate has proposed no im

The principal subject of this discussion was whether the Senate would recede from the above-mentioned amendment moved by Mr. Douglass, which was finally decided in the affirmative. In these discussions, a considerable portion of which was of a conversational character, Mr. Webster took a leading part; but of most of what was said by him, as by other Senators, no report has been preserved. The session of the Senate at which the last and most animated discussion of this subject took place, nominally on Saturday of the 12th of August, was prolonged till ten o'clock, A. M., of Sunday, the 13th. In the course of the debate on

this day Mr. Webster spoke as follows.]

I AM very little inclined to prolong this debate, and I hope I am utterly disinclined to bring into it any new warmth or excitement. I wish to say a few words,

ing Oregon itself; and the honorable member from Missouri 1 was right, entirely right, when he said that the amendment now under consideration had no relation to Oregon. That is perfectly true; and therefore the amendment which the Senate has adopted, and the House has disagreed to, has no connection with the immediate subject before it. The truth is, that it is an amendment by which the Senate wishes to have now a public, legal declaration, not respecting Oregon, but respecting the newly acquired territories of California and New Mexico. It wishes now to make a line of slavery, which shall include those new territories.

1 Mr. Benton.

The amendment says that the line of the "Missouri Compromise" shall be the line to the Pacific, and then goes on to say, in the language of the bill as it now stands, that the Ordinance of 1787 shall be applicable to Oregon; and therefore I say that the amendment proposed is foreign to the immediate object of the bill. It does nothing to modify, restrain, or affect, in any way, the government which we propose to establish over Oregon, or the condition or character of that government, or of the people under it. In a parliamentary view, this is the state of the case.

Now, Sir, this amendment has been attached to this bill by a strong majority of the Senate. That majority had the right, as it had the power, to pass it. The House disagreed to that amendment. If the majority of the Senate, who attached it to the bill, are of opinion that a conference with the House will lead to some adjustment of the question, by which this amendment, or something equivalent to it, may be adopted by the House, it is very proper for them to urge a conference. It is very fair, quite parliamentary, and there is not a word to be said against it. But my position is that of one who voted against the amendment, who thinks that it ought not to be attached to this bill; and therefore I naturally vote for the motion to get rid of it, that is, "to recede."

So much for the parliamentary question. Now there are two or three political questions arising in this case, which I wish to state dispassionately; not to argue, but to state. The honorable member from Georgia,' for whom I have great respect, and with whom it is my delight to cultivate personal friendship, has stated, with great propriety, the importance of this question. He has said, that it is a question interesting to the South and to the North, and one which may very well also attract the attention of mankind. He has not stated any part of this too strongly. It is such a question. Without doubt, it is a question which may well attract the 1 Mr. Berrien.

attention of mankind. On the subjects involved in this debate, the whole world is not now asleep. It is wide awake; and I agree with the honorable member, that, if what is now proposed to be done by us who resist this amendment is, as he supposes, unjust and injurious to any portion of this community, or against its constitutional rights, that injustice should be presented to the civilized world, and we, who concur in the proceeding, ought to submit ourselves to its rebuke. I am glad that the honorable gentleman proposes to refer this question to the great tribunal of Modern Civilization, as well as the great tribunal of the American People. It is proper. It is a question of magnitude enough, of interest enough, to all the civilized nations of the earth, to call from those who support the one side or the other a statement of the grounds upon which they act.

Now I propose to state as briefly as I can the grounds upon which I proceed, historical and constitutional; and will endeavor to use as few words as possible, so that I may relieve the Senate from hearing me at the earliest possible moment. In the first place, to view the matter historically. This Constitution, founded in 1787, and the government under it, organized in 1789, do recognize the existence of slavery in certain States then belonging to the Union, and a particular description of slavery. I hope that what I am about to say may be received without any supposition that I intend the slightest disrespect. But this particular description of slavery does not, I believe, now exist in Europe, nor in any other civilized portion of the habitable globe. It is not a predial slavery. It is not analogous to the case of the predial slaves, or slaves glebæ adscripti of Russia, or Hungary, or other states. It is a peculiar system of personal slavery, by which the person who is called a slave is transferable as a chattel, from hand to hand. I speak of this as a fact; and that is the fact. And I will say further, perhaps other gentlemen may remember the instances, that although slavery, as a sys

tem of servitude attached to the earth, exists in various countries of Europe, I am not at the present moment aware of any place on the globe in which this property of man in a human being as a slave, transferable as a chattel, exists, except America. Now, that it existed, in the form in which it still exists, in certain States, at the formation of this Constitution, and that the framers of that instrument, and those who adopted it, agreed that, as far as it existed, it should not be disturbed or interfered with by the new general government, there is no doubt.

The Constitution of the United States recognizes it as an existing fact, an existing relation between the inhabitants of the Southern States. I do not call it an "institution," because that term is not applicable to it; for that seems to imply a voluntary establishment. When I first came here, it was a matter of frequent reproach to England, the mother country, that slavery had been entailed upon the colonies by her, against their consent, and that which is now considered a cherished" institution" was then regarded as, I will not say an evil, but an entailment on the Colonies by the policy of the mother country against their wishes. At any rate, it stands upon the Constitution. The Constitution was adopted in 1788, and went into operation in 1789. When it was adopted, the state of the country was this: slavery existed in the Southern States; there was a very large extent of unoccupied territory, the whole Northwestern Territory, which, it was understood, was destined to be formed into States; and it was then determined that no slavery should exist in this territory. I gather now, as a matter of inference from the history of the time and the history of the debates, that the prevailing motives with the North for agreeing to this recognition of the existence of slavery in the Southern States, and giving a representation to those States founded in part upon their slaves, rested on the supposition that no acquisition of territory would be made to form new States on the south

ern frontier of this country, either by cession or conquest. No one looked to any acquisition of new territory on the southern or southwestern frontier. The exclusion of slavery from the Northwestern Territory and the prospective abolition of the foreign slave trade were generally, the former unanimously, agreed to; and on the basis of these considerations, the South insisted that where slavery existed it should not be interfered with, and that it should have a certain ratio of representation in Congress. And now, Sir, I am one, who, believing such to be the understanding on which the Constitution was framed, mean to abide by it.

There is another principle, equally clear, by which I mean to abide; and that is, that in the Convention, and in the first Congress, when appealed to on the subject by petitions, and all along in the history of this government, it was and has been a conceded point, that slavery in the States in which it exists is a matter of State regulation exclusively, and that Congress has not the least power over it, or right to interfere with it. Therefore I say, that all agitations and attempts to disturb the relations between master and slave, by persons not living in the slave States, are unconstitutional in their spirit, and are, in my opinion, productive of nothing but evil and mischief. I countenance none of them. The manner in which the governments of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it, is for their own consideration, under their responsibility to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it, nor right to interfere with it. They have never received any encouragement from me, and they never will. In my opinion, they have done nothing but delay and defeat their own professed objects.

I have now stated, as I understand it, the condition of things upon the adoption of the Constitution of the United