WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1850
221
still members of the Union. I ask no compromises. Leave the people who populate our vast T'erritories to establish institutions best suited to their views of morality and policy. It is a right inherent in the American character to govern them- selves. It is a right under the Constitution guarantied to Amer- ican citizens. If California had come forward with an authoriza- tion of slavery in her constitution would I have voted against her? No, I would not. If she has come forward with a prohibition of slavery, it is by the election of her citizens that she has done so. I care not whether they are regularly domiciliated, or whether they have become regularly initiated as citizens. They have gone there. There they are. There will always be a sufficient number to sustain a government there. There will be a State there. I am not afraid that it would drive them away from us if we do not admit them as a State. I have no such apprehensions, because I trust they have more loyalty than to abandon the land of their birth, the land of free and liberal institutions. I am not afraid of their abandoning their mother country. This is not the ground upon which I go for their admission. I go for it upon the broad principle that they have a right to govern themselves, and I am not to become the inquisitor of their political condition. They assume the State government with all its burdens and all its responsibilities. I am willing they should. For, if we consider it as a matter of policy or economy, we would have to :bankrupt the Treasury of the United States to give territorial officers the salaries to which they would be entitled in that gold region, and we would get none of the gold. I think it is a matter of economy; but, above economy, I think it is a matter of right and justice to them that they should be admitted. I would not, Mr. President, unite with the North or with the South to oppress either section. I cannot perceive that I violate the Constitution by voting for this bill. I cannot perceive that I array myself against the South by so voting. If the South were in a majority, and thought it would be a matter of policy to bear upon the North, it would not deter me from voting as I thought right, proper, and just. I think there is a duty, higher than anything sectional, developing upon every Senator in this body, to look to the conservation of this Union. If a majority desires to adopt certain measures-and all measures are carried by a majority-and give six or nine months to a full discussion of them, and have not come to a conclusion, I think they should not be longer deferred; and the majority
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