on an examination of
these questions and answers, that so far I have only answered
that I was not _pledged_ to this, that, or the other. The judge
has not framed his interrogatories to ask me any thing more than
this, and I have answered in strict accordance with the
interrogatories, and have answered truly that I am not _pledged_
at all upon any of the points to which I have answered. But I am
not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatories.
I am rather disposed to take up at least some of these questions,
and state what I really think upon them.

"As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive-Slave Law, I have
never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I
think, under the Constitution of the United States, the people of
the Southern States are entitled to a congressional slave law.
Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the
existing Fugitive-Slave Law, further than that I think it should
have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections
that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency. And
inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to an
alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to
introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general
question of slavery.

"In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged to the
admission of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you
very frankly that I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in
a position of having to pass upon that question. I should be
exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave
State admitted into the Union; but I must add, that if slavery
shall be kept out of the territories during the territorial
existence of any one given territory, and then the people shall,
having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt
the constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a
slave constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the
institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the
country, but to admit them into the Union. [Applause.]

"The third interrogatory is answered by the answer to the second,
it being, as I conceive, the same as the second.

"The fourth one is in regard to the abolition of slavery i