ow in such a case that the same rule of apportionment
should be applied. That, however, is a matter for the consideration of
Congress, when the proper time arrives. I may not then be here; I may
have no vote to give on the occasion; but I wish it to be distinctly
understood, that, according to my view of the matter, this government is
solemnly pledged, by law and contract, to create new States out of
Texas, with her consent, when her population shall justify and call for
such a proceeding, and, so far as such States are formed out of Texan
territory lying south of 36 deg. 30', to let them come in as slave States.
That is the meaning of the contract which our friends, the Northern
Democracy, have left us to fulfil; and I, for one, mean to fulfil it,
because I will not violate the faith of the government. What I mean to
say is, that the time for the admission of new States formed out of
Texas, the number of such States, their boundaries, the requisite amount
of population, and all other things connected with the admission, are in
the free discretion of Congress, except this; to wit, that, when new
States formed out of Texas are to be admitted, they have a right, by
legal stipulation and contract, to come in as slave States.

Now, as to California and New Mexico, I hold slavery to be excluded from
those territories by a law even superior to that which admits and
sanctions it in Texas. I mean the law of nature, of physical geography,
the law of the formation of the earth. That law settles for ever, with a
strength beyond all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist
in California or New Mexico. Understand me, Sir; I mean slavery as we
regard it; the slavery of the colored race as it exists in the Southern
States. I shall not discuss the point, but leave it to the learned
gentlemen who have undertaken to discuss it; but I suppose there is no
slavery of that description in California now. I understand that
_peonism_, a sort of penal servitude, exists there, or rather a sort of
voluntary sale of a man and his offspring for debt; an arrangement of a
peculiar nature known to the law of Mexico. But what I mean to say is,
that it is as impossible that African slavery, as we see it among us,
should find its way, or be introduced, into California and New Mexico,
as any other natural impossibility. California and New Mexico are
Asiatic in their formation and scenery. They are composed of vast ridges
of mountains, of great he