this partition of territory was not disadvantageous, at least to
the free States, as it disposed of the agitation consequent upon a
recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon a
celebrated case, and followed a precedent which had given peace to the
country upon this most dangerous subject of controversy for upwards of
thirty years, your Commissioners gave their assent to it as the best
practical solution of all difficulties growing out of the territorial
question.

New territory is no further dealt with by this article than to
require, except in certain specified cases, a majority of all the
Senators from each side of said line, to concur in its acquisition,
whether made by act of Congress or by treaty, thus giving to each
class of States a check upon the cupidity of the others.

The other sections of the article were designed in general so to
define and limit the rights, powers, and duties of both Congress and
the States, with regard to the subject of slavery, as to prevent
further controversy, and to enable and induce those most opposed in
opinion and interest, by the practice of mutual forbearance, to live
in peace and amity under the same Federal Government. It is believed
that in no essential particular will this article change the present
actual state of things; its value consisting in the security therein
which it gives to all, and in the settlement made by it of present and
probable subjects of controversy.

In a great practical matter of this sort, your Commissioners deem
these results of far more importance than strict adhesion to any
theory, however plausible in the abstract, and especially than to any
party declaration of principles of a sectional cast, however
vehemently argued, or numerously adopted on either side. To deal well
and wisely with the actual and real, and whilst consulting the past
and looking to the probable future for guidance, to base his action on
what _is_, comprises the whole duty of a statesman; leaving to
political philosophers to dream of what might have been, or in the
abstract of what ought to be. Reform, it is true, in this way comes
slowly, but it comes without the disturbance of material interests,
without agitation of human passions, and without the violent outbreaks
which these occasion--hindering and obstructing its progress in that
grand and orderly procession of moral causes and effects which
expresses and marks the providence and government of GOD.