. Douglass of
Illinois, on the 10th of August, by which the eighth section of the law
of the 6th of March, 1820, for the admission of Missouri, was revived
and adopted, as a part of the bill, and declared to be "in full force,
and binding, for the future organization of the territories of the
United States, in the same sense and with the same understanding with
which it was originally adopted."

This, with some of the other amendments of the Senate, was disagreed to
by the House. On the return of the bill to the Senate, a discussion
arose, and continued for several days, on the question of agreement or
disagreement with the amendments of the House to the Senate's
amendments.

The principal subject of this discussion was whether the Senate would
recede from the above-mentioned amendment moved by Mr. Douglass, which
was finally decided in the affirmative. In these discussions, a
considerable portion of which was of a conversational character, Mr.
Webster took a leading part; but of most of what was said by him, as by
other Senators, no report has been preserved. The session of the Senate
at which the last and most animated discussion of this subject took
place, nominally on Saturday of the 12th of August, was prolonged till
ten o'clock, A.M., of Sunday, the 13th. In the course of the debate on
this day Mr. Webster spoke as follows.]

I am very little inclined to prolong this debate, and I hope I am
utterly disinclined to bring into it any new warmth or excitement. I
wish to say a few words, however, first, upon the question as it is
presented to us, as a parliamentary question; and secondly, upon the
general political questions involved in the debate.

As a question of parliamentary proceeding, I understand the case to be
this. The House of Representatives sent us a bill for the establishment
of a territorial government in Oregon; and no motion has been made in
the Senate to strike out any part of that bill. The bill purporting to
respect Oregon, simply and alone, has not been the subject of any
objection in this branch of the legislature. The Senate has proposed no
important amendment to this bill, affecting Oregon itself; and the
honorable member from Missouri[1] was right, entirely right, when he
said that the amendment now under consideration had no relation to
Oregon. That is perfectly true; and therefore the amendment which the
Senate has adopted, and the House has disagreed to, has no connection
with the immed