265
PAPERS OF MIBABEAU BUONAPABTE LAlU.B
This being so, how then can any compromises Californian or Mis- sourian, wl!ich modify, warp, or add to the relative duties of the north and south, be tolerated by any friend of the constitution or the co~- try I They go to build up arbitrary regulations and to make our most sacred rights depend upon the mere will - the caprice of selfish and unrestricted majorities. They change the whole character of our gov- ernment, and afford full license to the strong to devour the weak; the very evil which our federative system was intended to avert. Surely the southern people cannot be content to hold their rights by no other tenure than this. Do they flatter themselves that there is more vir- tue in a compromise than there is in the constitution: and are they willing to co-operate with the free soilers in the dethronement of the latter, and in the substitution of the former? Yet this they virtually did by their tame submission to the Missouri compromise, and the very same thing will they do again, more effectually if they support accept, or tolerate any of the abolition compromises now pending in congress. When Missouri applied for admission into the Union, the Northern States, in congress, attempted to force her into free-soilism. Find- ing that they were not able to do this, they then introduced into the act of admission, a provision that no future state which might be formed out of the territory of the United States above a certain lati- tude, should be allowed to hold negro property. This they strove to make a part of the fundamental law of the land; and, to give it sanctity and warrant of continuance, they denominated it a compro- mise. Here was a direct assumption of power to legislate over slavery; a brand of infamy and degradation stamped upon the forehead of the south, in the eyes of the world, and a commencement of a policy of legislation which it is now designed to continue, which, if tolerated, will never cease as long as a vestige of the peculiar institutions of the south ·shall remain. If congress has the right thus to prohibit slavery north of 36-30, they have the same right to exclude it south of that line. If we acquiesce in its exclusion above this visionary moral equator, ., for the cogent reasons they advance, how can we, in opposition to the same arguments, resist its prohibition below that latitude? Once sur- render the principle and we surrender every thing. I am, therefore, opposed to any recognition of that pretended compromise. I defy its validity and force. It was a most flagrant usurpation of power - a power intended to serve as a foundation upon which the great lever was to be planted that was to overturn the liberties of the south. It was aimed for her destruction; and that she did not give to it that prompt and decisive repulsion which a brave people should always give to every infringement of their rights, is to be attributed to that lamentable disposition in the great mass of mankind to prefer the tran- quility of despotism to that eternal vigilance and those fearful perils which are necessary to the maintenance of liberty. Whether the south will bear the pre11ent asflaults upon her constitutional rights, with the same supineness that she suc[cumbed] to the Missouri aggression, is the [question] ·to be determined. rBesides thosle objections to both "comrpromises" in question,] there are othren1l of ra chRTRC'ter hoth? clogent and impressive. [Neither Cla]y's bill, or the Missouri [bill, is a co]mpromise at all. They are merely capit1tlatfons upon the part of the south - surrenders ·
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