id, even
assuming the power to pass the Wilmot proviso, which is denied, is that
there is a forbearance to exercise, not a violation of, the power to
pass the proviso. So, upon the other hand, if there was a power in
the Constitution of the United States authorizing the establishment
of slavery in any of the Territories--a power, however, which is
controverted by a large portion of this Senate--if there was a power
under the Constitution to establish slavery, the forbearance to exercise
that power is no violation of the Constitution, any more than the
Constitution is violated by a forbearance to exercise numerous powers,
that might be specified, that are granted in the Constitution, and that
remain dormant until they come to be exercised by the proper
legislative authorities. It is said that the bill presents the state of
coercion--that members are coerced, in order to get what they want, to
vote for that which they disapprove. Why, sir, what coercion is there?
* * * Can it be said upon the part of our Northern friends, because they
have not got the Wilmot proviso incorporated in the territorial part
of the bill, that they are coerced--wanting California, as they do, so
much--to vote for the bill, if they do vote for it? Sir, they might
have imitated the noble example of my friend (Senator Cooper, of
Pennsylvania), from that State upon whose devotion to this Union I place
one of my greatest reliances for its preservation. What was the course
of my friend upon this subject of the Wilmot proviso? He voted for it;
and he could go back to his constituents and say, as all of you could go
back and say to your constituents, if you chose to do so--"We wanted the
Wilmot proviso in the bill; we tried to get it in; but the majority of
the Senate was against it." The question then came up whether we should
lose California, which has got an interdiction in her constitution,
which, in point of value and duration, is worth a thousand Wilmot
provisos; we were induced, as my honorable friend would say, to take the
bill and the whole of it together, although we were disappointed in our
votes with respect to the Wilmot proviso--to take it, whatever omissions
may have been made, on account of the superior amount of good it
contains. * * *

Not the reception of the treaty of peace negotiated at Ghent, nor any
other event which has occurred during my progress in public life, ever
gave such unbounded and universal satisfaction as the settleme