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the farming States.

From the

From the very best information, it is no longer profitable to raise wheat, rye and corn by slave labour. Where these articles are the only staples of agriculture, in the pointed and expressive language of Mr. Randolph, " if the slave don't run away from his master, the master must run away from the slave." The slave will naturally be removed from such a country, where his labour is scarcely adequate to his own support, to a region where he can not only maintain himself, but yield large profits to his master. Texas will open such an outlet; and Slavery itself may thus finally pass the Del Norte, and be lost in Mexico. One thing is certain. The present number of slaves cannot be increased by the annexation of Texas.

I have never apprehended the preponderance of the slave States in the counsels of the nation. Such a fear has always appeared to me to be visionary. But even those who entertain such apprehensions need not be alarmed by the acquisition of Texas. More than the one half of its territory is wholly unfit for slave labour, and therefore, in the nature of things, must be free.

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The Treaty itself ought to determine how many free and how many slave States should be made out of this Territory; or it ought, in express terms, to leave the question of slavery to be decided by those States in their constitutions, as they severally apply for admission into the Union.

When

In the course of human events, Texas has again been presented to us for our acceptance. we ceded it to Spain, it was almost a wilderness; but it is now peopled by our sons, our brothers, and our kindred, who have convinced the world, by their bravery, that they are worthy of their breeding. They offer to return to our bosom themselves, and to restore to us this fine and fertile country which we had lost-a country more extensive than France, and naturally as beautiful, and blessed with almost every variety of soil and climate. And shall we reject this munificent donation? They justly appreciate a union with us as the highest privilege which any political community on earth can enjoy, and are willing to surrender themselves and their all to become free and sovereign States of our confederacy.

A proper regard for the opinion of mankind has

hitherto wisely prevented our government from treating for the annexation of Texas to this country. That we might, years ago, have concluded such a treaty, without any violation of national faith or national honour, I entertain not a doubt; but still we owed it to our own character before the nations of the earth not to act with precipitation on a question of such peculiar delicacy. Throughout the war we have maintained a strict neutrality between the belligerent powers. The Independence of Texas has now been acknowledged by the principal commercial nations of the earth. She has entered into treaties with them and with us. No foot of an invading enemy rests, or has ever rested, upon her soil since the battle of San Jacinto. She still regards her restoration to the bosom of our republic with an eye of intense desire. She has never faltered in this purpose, since the Declaration of her Independence in 1836, when she determined, with enthusiastic unanimity, in favour of re-annexation. The time has at length arrived when we may receive her without any imputation upon our honour.

EX GOVERNOR WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

OF NEW YORK.

I SHALL again allude, in the succeeding portion of this work, to Governor Seward; but he is a remarkable personage, and deserves peculiar notice. Many men possess superior talents, in particular and individual matters; but it is rare to meet with a mind so generally comprehensive, and a heart so full of various feeling. The law is his profession; but politics are a profession in the United States; and the influences of these two mighty powers, so universal throughout the Republic, are constantly to be distinguished reciprocating upon each other in the motives and actions of this devoted lover of his country and of her institutions. Sympathy with his race, both with the mass and the individual, with the virtuous and for the degraded, with the happy and the unhappy, with the white

man and the black; sympathy intense, unresting and universal, is the secret of Seward's character. Where weeps the destitute, there his voice is heard; where pines the oppressed, there his spirit lingers near; where groans the outcast, perchance the murderer, there also he is present, seeking to palliate, if not to save. I regard his perception of the springs of action as intuitive, and have, on more than one occasion, listened to his delineation of the criminal's progressive course in vice, with gratified and curious interest; he has sometimes shown me that even in the perpetration of the most hideous crimes, the offender may yet be human. Like most men of fervent character, it is in criminal causes that Seward is pre-eminent; in these his legal research, his acute perception, and his just and merciful nature shine forth in unrivalled lustre. In various civil causes he has proved himself an able and effective lawyer, and several distinguished members of the bar have expressed much commendation of his argument in the highly important Patent Case, in which he was eminently successful. Judge M'Clean, of the Supreme Court of the United

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