e that
will find its way through the carefully adjusted cloak of fair
pretension, and the sevenfold brass of two faced political intrigue, and
_no_-faced _non-committalism_, piercing to the dividing asunder of
joints and marrow. Be it known to every northern man who aspires to a
seat in our national councils, that hereafter congressional action on
this subject will be a MIGHTY REVELATOR--making secret thoughts public
property, and proclaiming on the house-tops what is whispered in the
ear--smiting off masks, and bursting open sepulchres beautiful
outwardly, and up-heaving to the sun their dead men's bones. To such we
say,--_Remember the Missouri Question, and the fate of those who then
sold the free states and their own birthright!_

Passing by the resolutions generally without remark--the attention of
the reader is specially solicited to Mr. Clay's substitute for Mr.
Calhoun's fifth resolution.

"Resolved, That when the District of Columbia was ceded by the states of
Virginia and Maryland to the United States, domestic slavery existed in
both of these states, including the ceded territory, and that, as it
still continues in both of them, it could not be abolished within the
District without a violation of that good faith, which was implied in
the cession and in the acceptance of the territory; nor, unless
compensation were made to the proprietors of slaves, without a manifest
infringement of an amendment to the constitution of the United States;
nor without exciting a degree of just alarm and apprehension in the
states recognizing slavery, far transcending in mischievous tendency,
any possible benefit which could be accomplished by the abolition."

By advocating this resolution, the south shifted its mode of defence,
not by taking a position entirely new, but by attempting to refortify an
old one--abandoned mainly long ago, as being unable to hold out against
assault however unskillfully directed. In the debate on this resolution,
the southern members of Congress silently drew off from the ground
hitherto maintained by them, viz.--that Congress has no power by the
constitution to abolish slavery in the District.

The passage of this resolution--with the vote of every southern senator,
forms a new era in the discussion of this question. We cannot join in
the lamentations of those who bewail it. We hail it, and rejoice in it.
It was as we would have had it--offered by a southern senator, advocated
by southern senator