will
lay this consideration to their consciences, and judge of it as they
think they ought to do.

Gentlemen, I will detain you but a moment longer. You know that I gave
my vote in Congress against the treaty of peace with Mexico, because it
contained these cessions of territory, and brought under the authority
of the United States, with a pledge of future admission into the Union,
the great, vast, and almost unknown countries of New Mexico and
California.

In the session before the last, one of the Southern Whig Senators, Mr.
Berrien of Georgia, had moved a resolution, to the effect that the war
ought not to be continued for the purposes of conquest and acquisition.
The resolution declared that the war with Mexico ought not to be
prosecuted by this government with any view to the dismemberment of that
republic, or to the acquisition, by conquest, of any portion of her
territory. That proposition he introduced into the Senate, in the form
of a resolution; and I believe that every Whig Senator but one voted for
it. But the Senators belonging to the Locofoco or Democratic party voted
against it. The Senators from New York voted against it. General Cass,
from the free State of Michigan, Mr. Fairfield, from Maine, Mr. Niles,
from Connecticut, and others, voted against it, and the vote was lost.
That is, these gentlemen,--some of them very prominent friends of Mr.
Van Buren, and ready to take the field for him,--these very gentlemen
voted not to exclude territory that might be obtained by conquest. They
were willing to bring in the territory, and then have a squabble and
controversy whether it should be slave or free territory. I was of
opinion that the true and safe policy was, to shut out the whole
question by getting no territory, and thereby keep off all controversy.
The territory will do us no good, if free; it will be an encumbrance, if
free. To a great extent, it will produce a preponderance in favor of the
South in the Senate, even if it be free. Let us keep it out, therefore.
But no. We will make the acquisition, bring in the territory, and manage
it afterwards. That was the policy.

Gentlemen, in an important crisis in English history, in the reign of
Charles the Second, when the country was threatened by the accession to
the throne of a prince, then called the Duke of York, who was a bigot to
the Roman Catholic religion, a proposition was made to exclude him from
the crown. Some said that was a very rash measu