ans.

The principle of non-intervention, on which the compromise of 1850 was
based, was in itself so simple, so just, so consistent with the
Constitution and the democratic theory of our institutions, that it
could not but prevail. Out of 3,143,679 votes cast for President in
1852, Mr. Hale received 155,825, leaving 2,987,854 as the popular vote
in favor of the compromise of 1850.

I rejoice to know that in that great struggle to establish sound and
enduring constitutional principle, to rule the Federal government on the
question of slavery, the Whig party and its noble old leaders, were as
they had ever been, on the side of the Union and the Constitution. The
compromise of 1850 was with Webster and Clay the crowning achievement of
illustrious lives, and having accomplished this great work, they soon--

"Sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust,
Drew around them the drapery of the couch of death,
And laid down to pleasant dreams,"

full of years and full of honors.

The compromise of 1850 touched the true principle of dealing with
slavery, but it was not a perfect work. It left upon the statute book of
the nation, legislation still operating over United States territory,
directly opposed to the principle of non-intervention, which the nation
had almost unanimously approved. The principle of the compromise of
1850, and the principle of permission or prohibition involved in a
geographical line to divide Free and Slave States, were directly
inconsistent with each other, and sooner or later this inconsistency had
to be met and removed. For the Congress to say, as they did in the
compromise of 1850, that the people of Texas, Utah and New Mexico,
should be admitted to the Union as Free States or as Slave States, as
they might choose, and at the same time to affirm as they did by
retaining, or at least not formally erasing, the Missouri compromise
line and the Oregon prohibition, that the people of Kansas, Nebraska and
Oregon, and all the north-west territories should come into the Union as
Free States or not at all, was a glaring inconsistency, and
discrimination, not in favor of the North, but in favor of the South.
Men in Oregon wanting domestic slaves could not have them. Men in Utah
and New Mexico wanting slaves could have them or not, as they pleased.
One man in the nation was found able enough, and brave enough, and
patriotic enough to grapple with this question and bring it to the test,
and ca