three hundred and eighty-three square miles are south of
the slave line—south of 36 deg. 30 min. Here is territory enough to make more than thirty slave States of the size
of Massachusetts.
At the present day, it is proposed to have some further action on the matter of slavery. Connected with this subject, four great questions come up to be decided:—
1. Shall four new slave States at any time be made out of Texas? This is not a question which is to be decided at present, yet it is one of great present importance, and furnishes an excellent test of the moral character and political conduct of politicians at this moment. The other questions are of immediate and pressing concern. Here they are:—
2. Shall Slavery be prohibited in California?
3. Shall Slavery be prohibited in New Mexico?
4. What laws shall be passed relative to fugitive slaves?
Mr. Webster, in this speech, defines his position in regard to each of these four questions.
I. In regard to the new States to be made hereafter out of Texas, he gives us his opinion, in language well studied, and even with an excess of caution. Let us look at it, and the resolution which annexed Texas. That declares that "new States … not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas … may hereafter, by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution. And such States … shall be admitted with or without slavery, as the people of each State asking admission may desire."
I will not stop to consider the constitutionality of the joint resolution which annexed Texas. Mr. Webster's opinion on that subject is well known. But the resolution does two things: 1. It confers a power, the power to make four new States on certain conditions; a qualified power, restricted by the terms of the act. 2nd. It imposes an obligation, namely, the obligation to leave it to the people of the new State to keep slaves or not, when the State is admitted. The words may be, etc., indicate the conferring of a power: the words shall be, etc., the imposing of an obligation. But as the power is a qualified power, so is the obligation a qualified obligation; the shall be is dependent on the may be, as much as the may be on the
