essions
of individuals, and they pass away. Where is the man who will consent
to hold any political right at the will of any man or class of men, no
matter how kindly disposed? We all require security. The highest and
grandest aim and object of government is not the stability and peace
of society, but a well-grounded confidence in the minds of the people
of the perpetuity of that stability and peace.

The South asks the right to use and occupy a portion of the common
territory of the country. As a northern man I will accept the
compromise, and I believe a large majority of the people will agree
with me. You, gentlemen of the South, have asked that the arrangement
may be extended to territory hereafter to be acquired. New Jersey has
voted in this Convention against interference with slavery in the
territory, present or future, and she is the only northern State that
has cast her vote in favor of your demand. Her representatives have
been told somewhat sneeringly, that while slaveholding States voted
against this proposition, New Jersey was the only free State that
voted for it. Well, we accept the responsibility, and will bear it.
New Jersey has made up her record. There it stands, and there let it
stand forever. We are proud of it. If civil war is to come, if this
land is to be deluged with fraternal blood, when that time comes
there will not be a northern State represented here that would not
give untold millions to be placed upon that record by the side of New
Jersey.

The fact is, sir, we have acquired our liberties too cheaply. Had we
purchased them at the cost our fathers did, by coloring the snows of
winter by our blood tracks, and by passing the summers in the
unhealthy morass, we should have learned to prize them more highly; we
should be more patriotic and less proud, more sensible and less
sensitive.

A word further on the subject of extending this provision to territory
hereafter acquired. Gentlemen, you do not want that provision; you do
not need any provision as to future acquisitions. You are better off
without it. No present rights are involved in it. You are providing
for a contingency which may never, and probably never will happen.
Would it not be inconsistent for a nation to commit suicide because a
constitution is not made to meet an improbable contingency? You have
territory enough for the next two hundred years. You say you require
it to maintain your honor, to preserve your fair equality, to m