In the “territory north of the Missouri compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude, (except for crime,) shall be prohibited.” So reads the bond.

If Texas meant to abide by the resolutions of annexation, and to claim any thing under them, it was her clear and imperative duty forthwith to pass a law, securing freedom to every inhabitant north of the compromise line.

Now, on investigation, I believe it will most conclusively appear that there is not an inch of Texan territory north of the stipulated line.

It all belongs to New Mexico, as much as Nantucket or Berkshire belongs to Massachusetts.

Still further; this bill derides the trial by jury, secured by the constitution.

A man may not lose a horse without a right to this trial; but he may his freedom.

Webster spoke for the south and for slavery; not for the north and for freedom, when he abandoned this right.

But still I say, that the man who can read this bill without having his blood boil in his veins, has a power of refrigeration that would cool the tropics.

I have taken what seemed to me the more manly course; and if these views should ever by chance fall under his eye, I believe he has magnanimity enough to respect me the more for the frankness I have used.

If I am wrong, I will not add to an error of judgment the meanness of a clandestine attack.

If I am right, no one can complain; for we must all bow before the majesty of truth.

It is said, that the corporation of Liverpool, at this time, “believed firmly that the very existence of the city depended upon the continuance of the traffic.” Look at Liverpool now, and reflect what greater rewards, even of a temporal…

And is commerce, the daughter of freedom, thus forever to lift her parricidal hand against the parent that bore her?

Are rich men forever to use their “thirty pieces of silver,” or their “ten thousand pounds sterling,” or their hundreds of thousands of dollars, to reward the Judases for betraying their Savior?

Let those who aid, abet, or connive at slavery extension now, as they read the damning sentence which history has awarded against the actors, abettors, and connivers of the African trade, but change the names, and they will be reading of…

Why can we not combine for the sacred cause of freedom, as they combine for slavery?

Public revenues I would appropriate, private taxation I would endure, to relieve this otherwise thrice-glorious republic from the calamity and the wrong of slavery.

I mention this to prove that it is not the value, in money, of territorial freedom, for which I contend, but its value in character, in justice, in human happiness.

Pecuniary surrenders I would gladly make for the sake of peace, but not for peace itself would I surrender liberty.

They will have nothing to sell but gold; they will have every thing to buy,--cradles and coffins, and all between.

A surrender, therefore, by our northern business men, will be most disastrous to the very business that tempts them to surrender.

Had the north stood firm, had they been true to the great principles they have so often and so solemnly proclaimed, the waves of southern violence would have struck harmless at their feet.

We are assailed now because we have yielded before.

The moral paralysis which failed to oppose the Mexican war, has given us the territories.

If the territories are now surrendered, we shall have Cuba, and an indefinite career of conquest and of slavery will be opened on our south-western border.