I have exhausted their
utterances, but that my time admits of no more.

The Republican party proclaims no doctrine so _ultra_ as theirs, uses no
language so strong as that of those Southern statesmen from whom it
gains so much information, and whose views, to a great extent, it
conscientiously accepts. We desire only to confine it within its present
limits; we ask that it shall not pollute territory now free; we know the
utter folly of appealing to the morality or humanity of a pro-slavery
party, where the rights of a black man are involved; but when you insist
on taking slaves into a free Territory, and smiting the land with this
blighting, withering curse, we plant ourselves on our constitutional
rights, and say, _thus far shall you go, and no further_.

The learned gentleman from Alabama, [Mr. CURRY,] in alluding to the
opinion of the fathers of the Republic, said:

"These, however, were but mere speculations."

Was it a mere speculation when Madison said, "we have seen a mere
distinction of color made the ground of the most oppressive dominion of
man over man?" Was it as a mere speculation that Jefferson wrote, that
Cornwallis would have been right, had he carried away his (Jefferson's)
slaves to free them? Was it a mere speculation, a wild fancy, that the
framers of the Constitution would not admit that there could be such a
thing as property in man? A mere speculation, was it, of Patrick Henry,
when he said "that slavery is detested; we feel its fatal effects; we
deplore it?" when he declared it would "rejoice his very soul, were all
his fellow beings emancipated?" Was it a mere speculation when Jefferson
wrote, and his colleagues signed, "we hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal?" No one then doubted the
truth of this declaration. More than a generation passed away before any
man dared raise his voice against it. No, sir; this was no mere
speculation, but the acknowledgment of a great "humanitarian fact." True
then, it is true now; and must remain indisputable and eternal--a pillar
of fire by night, a cloud by day, to guide and guard nations yet unborn
in the path of honor, of safety, of moral and political grandeur.

But the learned gentleman does not pause upon these "speculations." He
proceeds to tell us that circumstances are changed; that there was then
little more than half a million slaves, and scarce a pound of cotton
exported. Does the gentleman believe, or does he but