WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1854
511
present condition, and presented the matter in the shape in which it now stands. If it was necessary at all, it was necessary last year. No new developments have been made. The great principle of non-intervention existed then. There is no new demand for it now. Is not that a reason why this bill ought not to pass? Was there any new indication given of its necessity up to the time that the bill was introduced here? None throughout the whole land. How, and where, and why, and when, and with whom this measure originated, Heaven only knows,-for I have no cognizance of the facts; but I well know that persons deeply involved in it, and exercising senatorial privileges here, never received informa- tion that such a measure would be brought forward, or would be urged with that pertinacity ,vith which it is now done. Little did we think that it was to be urged upon_us as a great healing measure. The honorable Senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason] said last night that this is to be regarded as a great healing measure for the purpose of preventing agitation. Sir, I heard of no agitation until it arose here, nor would there have been any this day in the United States, if the bill in the :form in which it was presented last year, had been brought forward and adopted without any provision either for non-intervention or the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. So far back as 1848, I find that President Polk recognized the Missouri Compromise as of binding force upon this country. He considered it not only binding upon the North in relation to the South, but, as the Chief Magistrate of this Union, he regarded it as binding upon the South, because it accorded certain privileges to the South; for he says, when speaking in relation to his ap- proval of the Oregon bill, that he approved it because it lay north of 36° 30'; but had it lain south of 36° 30', he would not say what action he would have taken upon it; clearly intimating that he would have vetoed the bill, regarding as he did the Missouri Compromise as obligatory on the two sections of the Union. How has it been repudiated since that time? Was it repudiated and superseded, or rendered null and void, by the Compromise of 1850? No such thing. Do you think that the astute statesmen, the men who managed and controlled the business of that Com- promise, as much as any other men versed and skilled in legal lore and in general learning, men of acumen and keen perception, would have permitted that matter to go unexplained, if it eyer had been contemplated·to repeal the Missouri Compromise? Mr.
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