of the
nation, and for thirty years, and by each of a score of "compromises,"
treacherously knocked off to the lowest bidder, and that without money
and without price, the North, plundered and betrayed, _will not_, in
this her accepted time, consider the things that belong to her peace
before they are hidden from her eyes, then let her eat of the fruit of
her own way, and be filled with her own devices! Let the shorn and
blinded giant grind in the prison-house of the Philistines, till taught
the folly of intrusting to Delilahs the secret and the custody of his
strength.

Have the free States bound themselves by an oath never to profit by the
lessons of experience? If lost to _reason_, are they dead to _instinct_
also? Can nothing rouse them to cast about for self preservation? And
shall a life of tame surrenders be terminated by suicidal sacrifice?

A "COMPROMISE!" Bitter irony! Is the plucked and hood-winked North to be
wheedled by the sorcery of another Missouri compromise? A compromise in
which the South gained all, and the North lost all, and lost it for
ever. A compromise which embargoed the free laborer of the North and
West, and clutched at the staff he leaned upon, to turn it into a
bludgeon and fell him with its stroke. A compromise which wrested from
liberty her boundless birthright domain, stretching westward to the
sunset, while it gave to slavery loose reins and a free course, from the
Mississippi to the Pacific.

The resolution, as it finally passed, is here inserted. The original
Resolution, as moved by Mr. Clay, was inserted at the head of this
postscript with the impression that it was the _amended_ form. It will
be seen however, that it underwent no material modification.

"Resolved, That the interference by the citizens of any of the states,
with the view to the abolition of slavery in the District, is
endangering the rights and security of the people of the District; and
that any act or measure of Congress designed to abolish slavery in the
District, would be a violation of the faith implied in the cessions by
the states of Virginia and Maryland, a just cause of alarm to the people
of the slaveholding states, and have a direct and inevitable tendency to
disturb and endanger the Union."

The vote upon the Resolution stood as follows:

_Yeas_.--Messrs. Allen, Bayard, Benton, Black, Buchanan, Brown, Calhoun,
Clay, of Alabama, Clay, of Kentucky, Clayton, Crittenden, Cuthbert,
Fulton, Grundy, Hubba