t degree, it would be competent for
Congress to-morrow to pass any law on that subject.

How then can it be said that the principle of non-intervention on the
part of Congress in the subject of slavery was enacted and established
by the compromise measures of 1850? But, whether that be so or not, how
can you find, in a simple measure applying in terms to these individual
Territories, and to them alone, a rule which is to govern all other
Territories with a retrospective and with a prospective action? Is
it not a mere begging of the question to say that those compromise
measures, adopted in this specific case, amount to such a general rule?

But, let us try it in a parallel case. In the earlier land legislation
of the United States, it was customary, without exception, when a
Territory became a State, to require that there should be a stipulation
in their State constitution that the public lands sold within their
borders should be exempted from taxation for five years after the sale.
This, I believe, continued to be the uniform practice down to the year
1820, when the State of Missouri was admitted. She was admitted under
the stipulation. If I mistake not, the next State which was admitted
into the Union--but it is not important whether it was the next or
not--came in without that stipulation, and they were left free to tax
the public lands the moment when they were sold. Here was a principle;
as much a principle as it is contended was established in the Utah and
New Mexico territorial bill; but did any one suppose that it acted upon
the other Territories? I believe the whole system is now abolished under
the operation of general laws, and the influence of that example may
have led to the change. But, until it was made by legislation, the mere
fact that public lands sold in Arkansas were immediately subject to
taxation, could not alter the law in regard to the public lands sold in
Missouri, or in any other to where they were they were exempt.

There is a case equally analogous to the very matter we are now
considering--the prohibition or permission of slavery. The ordinance of
1787 prohibited slavery in the territory northwest of the Ohio. In 1790
Congress passed an act accepting the cession which the State of North
Carolina had made of the western part of her territory, with the
proviso, that in reference to the territory thus ceded Congress should
pass no laws "tending to the emancipation of the slaves." Here was a
p