this respect; but I think his report sustains the view which I now take
of the subject: that is, that the legislation of 1850 did not establish
a principle which was designed to have any such effect as he intimates.
That report states how matters stood in those new Mexican territories.
It was alleged on the one hand that by the Mexican _lex loci_ slavery
was prohibited. On the other hand that was denied, and it was maintained
that the Constitution of the United States secures to every citizen the
right to go there and take with him any property recognized as such
by any of the States of the Union. The report considers that a similar
state of things now exists in Nebraska--that the validity of the eighth
section of the Missouri Act, by which slavery is prohibited in that
Territory, is doubtful, and that it is maintained by many distinguished
statesmen that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject.
Then, in this state of the controversy, the report maintains that
the legislation of Congress in 1850 did not undertake to decide these
questions. Surely, if they did not undertake to decide them, they could
not settle the principle which is at stake in them; and, unless they did
decide them, the measures then adopted must be considered as specific
measures, relating only to those case and not establishing a principle
of general operation. This seems to me to be as direct and conclusive as
anything can be.

At all events, these are not impressions which are put forth by me under
the exigencies of the present debate or of the present occasion. I have
never entertained any other opinion. I was called upon for a particular
purpose, of a literary nature, to which I will presently allude more
distinctly, shortly after the close of the session of 1850, to draw up a
narrative of the events that had taken place relative to the passage of
the compromise measures of that year. I had not, I own, the best sources
of information. I was not a member of Congress, and had not heard