them many hundred fold."[2] These
were the views of practical men and experienced slave-owners who
represented the opinions of their constituents, and who believed that
domestic slavery could be employed to advantage anywhere. Moreover, the
Southern leaders openly avowed their opposition to securing any region to
free labor exclusively, no matter what the ordinances of nature might be.
In 1848, it must be remembered in this connection, Mr. Webster not only
urged the limitation of slave area, and sustained the power of Congress to
regulate this matter in the territories, but he did not resist the final
embodiment of the principle of the Wilmot Proviso in the bill for the
organization of Oregon, where the introduction of slavery was infinitely
more unlikely than in New Mexico. Cotton, sugar, and rice were excluded,
perhaps, by nature from the Mexican conquests, but slavery was not. It was
worse than idle to allege that a law of nature forbade slaves in a country
where mines gaped to receive them. The facts are all as plain as possible,
and there is no escape from the conclusion that in opposing the Wilmot
Proviso, in 1850, Mr. Webster abandoned his principles as to the extension
of slavery. He practically stood forth as the champion of the Southern
policy of letting the new territories alone, which could only result in
placing them in the grasp of slavery. The consistency which he labored so
hard to prove in his speech was hopelessly shattered, and no ingenuity,
either then or since, can restore it.

[Footnote 1: _Congressional Globe_, 31st Congress, 1st Session, p. 203.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., Appendix, p. 510.]

A dispassionate examination of Mr. Webster's previous course on slavery,
and a careful comparison of it with the ground taken in the 7th of March
speech, shows that he softened his utterances in regard to slavery as a
system, and that he changed radically on the policy of compromise and on
the question of extending the area of slavery. There is a confused story
that in the winter of 1847-48 he had given the anti-slavery leaders to
understand that he proposed to come out on their ground in regard to
Mexico, and to sustain Corwin in his attack on the Democratic policy, but
that he failed to do so. The evidence on this point is entirely
insufficient to make it of importance, but there can be no doubt that in
the winter of 1850 Mr. Webster talked with Mr. Giddings, and led him, and
the other Free-Soil leaders, to be