tional
hostility into a positive element of political power, and
brought our institutions into peril, it has therefore become
the imperative duty of the American party to interpose, for the
purpose of giving peace to the country, and perpetuity to the
Union. And as experience has shown it impossible to reconcile
opinions so extreme as those which separate the disputants, and
as there can be no dishonor in submitting to the laws, the
National Council has deemed it the best guaranty of common
justice and of future peace, to abide by and maintain the
existing laws upon the subject of slavery, as a final and
conclusive settlement of that subject in spirit and in
substance.

"And regarding it the highest duty to avow their opinions upon
a subject so important, in distinct and unequivocal terms, it
is hereby declared as the sense of this National Council, that
Congress possesses no power, under the Constitution, to
legislate upon the subject of slavery in the States where it
does or may exist, or to exclude any State from admission into
the Union, because its Constitution does or does not recognize
the institution of slavery as a part of its social system; and
expressly pretermitting any expression of opinion upon the
power of Congress to establish or prohibit slavery in any
Territory, it is the sense of the National Council that
Congress ought not to legislate upon the subject of slavery
within the Territories of the United States, and that any
interference by Congress with slavery as it exists in the
District of Columbia, would be a violation of the spirit and
intention of the compact by which the State of Maryland ceded
the District to the United States, and a breach of the national
faith."

In the "wild hunt" for territory by the progressive Democracy, and their
efforts to settle our Western lands with foreigners who are to a man
Free Soilers and Abolitionists, the South has more to fear than from all
other considerations. What is Gov. Johnson's iniquitous Homestead Bill,
but a bid for foreigners? He proposes to give to the heads of families
one hundred and sixty acres of land, thus _hiring_ all the convicts and
paupers of Europe to come and settle in our Western States and
Territories! Sir, but let your progressive, sublimated,
double-distilled, converging-lines, Johnso