I deny it, and call
for the proof. It is not contended, I believe, that any such command has
ever been given in express terms. It is only said that it was done in
principle. The support of the Wilmot Proviso is the first fact mentioned
to prove that the Missouri restriction was repudiated in principle, and
the second is the refusal to extend the Missouri line over the country
acquired from Mexico. These are near enough alike to be treated together.
The one was to exclude the chances of slavery from the whole new
acquisition by the lump, and the other was to reject a division of it, by
which one half was to be given up to those chances. Now, whether this was
a repudiation of the Missouri line in principle depends upon whether the
Missouri law contained any principle requiring the line to be extended
over the country acquired from Mexico. I contend it did not. I insist
that it contained no general principle, but that it was, in every sense,
specific. That its terms limit it to the country purchased from France is
undenied and undeniable. It could have no principle beyond the intention
of those who made it. They did not intend to extend the line to country
which they did not own. If they intended to extend it in the event of
acquiring additional territory, why did they not say so? It was just as
easy to say that "in all the country west of the Mississippi which we now
own, or may hereafter acquire, there shall never be slavery," as to say
what they did say; and they would have said it if they had meant it. An
intention to extend the law is not only not mentioned in the law, but is
not mentioned in any contemporaneous history. Both the law itself, and the
history of the times, are a blank as to any principle of extension; and
by neither the known rules of construing statutes and contracts, nor by
common sense, can any such principle be inferred.

Another fact showing the specific character of the Missouri law--showing
that it intended no more than it expressed, showing that the line was not
intended as a universal dividing line between Free and Slave territory,
present and prospective, north of which slavery could never go--is the
fact that by that very law Missouri came in as a slave State, north of the
line. If that law contained any prospective principle, the whole law must
be looked to in order to ascertain what the principle was. And by this
rule the South could fairly contend that, inasmuch as they got one slave
State