WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1851
326
going to insist upon requisitions that I do not deem right; nor am I going to follow fantasies for legislative direction by which the country cannot be benefited. I am sent here to act in a legislative capacity for my State in matters of detail, and for the Union on general subjects. I have one director in that: it is the Constitution. Wherever that directs me there will I go. Mr. President, I delivered my spech on the subject of the com- promise on the 8th of February, 1850; and the resolution of compromise was introduced on the 14th of February following- six days afterwards, so that I have not been wholly disconnected from that matter. I put it to ·the candor of any gentleman, . whether I have not been as zealous and as forward in the sup- port of that measure as any other member of this body. I occu- pied no equivocal position in relation to it, or the results grow- ing out of it. I wish to add no additional plank to the platform. The honorable gentleman may deem it necessary to do so. If he presents himself as the organ of the party to which I belong, and wishes to ingraft this condition upon the platform, I, as a ·member of the Democratic party-unimportant as I may be- most solemnly, in the face of the Senate, this assemblage, and the world, protest against any test that has not its origin in the action of the Democratic National Convention, called for politi- cal purposes. I never will record my vote on the Journals of this Senate for a resolution that is not connected with legisla- tion, and is purely political in its character. I will not blacken the white paper of the Senate with it. If I distrusted the intel- ligence of the American people; if I distrusted their patriotism, I might set myself up as a dictator of opinions, and instruct them in what they ought to do. But I have no pretentions to the character of a leader. I am willing to follow; and I have got the broad road before me. I have got the platform on which we have stood, and on which we have acted. I did not expect an entire concordance of opinions, or of platforms, but such as have formerly reconciled those opinions. Heretofore gentlemen in favor of internal improvements and gentlemen opposed to them have stood upon the same platform. Tariff and anti-tariff gen- tlemen have stood upon the same platform: they have supported the great creed of Democracy; and if you begin to enlarge that platform we shall have more trouble hereafter in reconciling other jarring interests. It will create additional trouble to the party. I believed that the discord which had existed throughout the country on various subjects, and particularly the conflict
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