t I had
been certainly opposed to annexation; that, if I should go over the
whole matter again, I should have nothing new to add; that I had acted,
all along, under the unanimous declaration of all parties, and of the
legislature of Massachusetts; that I thought there must be some limit to
the extent of our territories, and that I wished this country should
exhibit to the world the example of a powerful republic, without
greediness and hunger of empire. And I added, that while I held, with as
much faithfulness as any citizen of the country, to all the original
arrangements and compromises of the Constitution under which we live, I
never could, and I never should, bring myself to be in favor of the
admission of any States into the Union as slave-holding States; and I
might have added, any States at all, to be formed out of territories not
now belonging to us.

Now, as I have said, in all this I acted under the resolutions of the
State of Massachusetts, certainly concurrent with my own judgment, so
often repeated, and reaffirmed by the unanimous consent of all men of
all parties, that I could not well go through the series, pointing out,
not only the impolicy, but the unconstitutionality, of such annexation.
If a State proposes to come into the Union, and to come in as a slave
State, then there is an augmentation of the inequality in the
representation of the people; an inequality already existing, with which
I do not quarrel, and which I never will attempt to alter, but shall
preserve as long as I have a vote to give, or any voice in this
government, because it is a part of the original compact. Let it stand.
But then there is another consideration of vastly more general
importance even than that; more general, because it affects all the
States, free and slave-holding; and it is, that, if States formed out of
territories thus thinly populated come into the Union, they necessarily
and inevitably break up the relation existing between the two branches
of the government, and destroy its balance. They break up the intended
relation between the Senate and the House of Representatives. If you
bring in new States, any State that comes in must have two Senators. She
may come in with fifty or sixty thousand people, or more. You may have,
from a particular State, more Senators than you have Representatives.
Can any thing occur to disfigure and derange the form of government
under which we live more signally than that? Here would b