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As a Civilian and Statesman, during the brief period in which he has been permitted to enjoy the transcendent honors which a grateful country had awarded him, he has given proof of a devotion to duty, of an attachment to the Constitution and the Union, of a patriotic determination to maintain the peace of our country, which no trials or temptations could shake. He has borne his faculties meekly, but firmly. He has been "clear in his great office." He has known no local partialities or prejudices, but has proved himself capable of embracing his whole country, in the comprehensive affections and regards of a large and generous heart.

But he has fallen almost at the threshold of his civil career, and at a moment when some of us were looking to him to render services to the country, which we had thought no other man could perform. Certainly, Sir, he has died too soon for every body but himself. We can hardly find it in our hearts to repine that the good old man has gone to his rest. We would not disturb the repose in which the brave old soldier sleeps. His part in life had been long and faithfully performed. In his own last words," he had always done his duty, and he was not afraid to die." But our regrets for ourselves and for our country are deep, strong, and unfeigned. "He should have died hereafter."

Sir, it was a fit and beautiful circumstance in the close of such a career, that his last official appearance was at the celebration of the birthday of our National Independence, and more especially, that his last public act was an act of homage to the memory of him, whose example he had ever revered and followed, and who, as he himself so well said, "was, by so many titles, the Father of his Country."

And now, Mr. Speaker, let us hope that this event may teach us all how vain is our reliance upon any arm of flesh. Let us hope that it may impress us with a solemn sense of our national as well as individual dependence on a higher than human Power. Let us remember that "the Lord is king, be the people never so impatient; that He sitteth between the cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet." Let us, in language which is now hallowed to us all, as having been the closing and crowning sentiment of the brief but admirable Inaugural Address with which this illus

trious Patriot opened his Presidential term, and which it is my privilege to read at this moment from the very copy from which it was originally read by himself to the American people, on the 4th day of March, 1849,-"Let us,” in language in which "he, being dead, yet speaketh"-"let us invoke a continuance of the same Protecting Care which has led us from small beginnings to the eminence we this day occupy; and let us seek to deserve that continuance by prudence and moderation in our councils; by well-directed attempts to assuage the bitterness which too often marks unavoidable differences of opinion; by the promulgation and practice of just and liberal principles; and by an enlarged patriotism, which shall acknowledge no limits but those of our own wide-spread Republic."

THE DEATH OF DANIEL P. KING.

REMARKS MADE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED

STATES, ON THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF MR. KING, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MASSACHUSETTS, JULY 27, 1850,

IF mere custom had prevailed on this occasion, Mr. Speaker, it would have fallen to me, as the senior member of the Massachusetts Delegation in this Hall, to perform the sad duty, which has been so faithfully and feelingly discharged by my friend and colleague, (Hon. Julius Rockwell,) who has just taken his seat. I trust, therefore, that I may be allowed to say, that, in yielding, as I readily have done, to the claims of a more intimate association and immediate companionship with the excellent person whose death has been announced to us, I have not been wanting in the deepest regret for his loss, or in the most sincere respect for his memory.

It has been my good fortune to be connected with Mr. King for many years in the Legislature of our own Commonwealth, as well as to be with him here, during the whole period of his seven years' service as a member of this House; and I can truly say, that I have seldom met with a more just and worthy man, or with one more scrupulously faithful to every obligation to his neighbor, his country, and his God.

His devotion as a public servant, his integrity as a private citizen, and the high moral and religious character which he sustained in all the relations of life, had endeared him not merely to his immediate constituents, but to the whole people of Massachusetts; and there is no one who was more likely to have received at their hands, at no distant day, the reward of an honorable ambition, in the highest honors of his native State.

people? Allow, if you please, that this population has increased, during the last ten years, sufficiently to bring up the whole exist ing population, slaves included, to nine millions of people. You have then less than ten persons, black and white, bond and free, to a square mile of territory! Is there not room enough here for every degree of expansion which can be predicted, upon the largest calculation, for a century to come?

Meantime, Sir, do not forget, that the free States, with a population, by the census of 1840, of more than nine millions and a half, and which must now have run up to not less than thirteen or fourteen millions, have only about four hundred and fifty thousand square miles. In other words, the free States, at this moment, have thirty persons to a square mile, while the slave States have only ten!

I exclude all the territories in this calculation. But it is a striking fact, that if all the territories, without exception, not included within the limits of any State, were added to the free States, and a proportion were then instituted between the number of square miles occupied by the free white population of the two classes of States, it would be found that the slave States would fall but little short of their full share. And this, Sir, without making any allowance for the uninhabitable deserts and frozen wastes and mountains of rock and ice, by which these territories are so greatly curtailed in their dimensions, so far as any practical purposes of occupation or enjoyment are concerned.

I repeat, then, Mr. Chairman, it is not with the vain idea of crowding slavery out of existence, that I adhere to the principles of the ordinance of 1787.

Nor is it, Sir, upon any consideration of local power, or with any view of securing a sectional preponderance. For one, I see in the Constitution of the United States an ample security against any real aggression which either section of the Union could be tempted to commit against the other. And even if it were not so, there is a peculiar tie of common interest among the slave States, growing out of this very institution of slavery, which always has made them, and always will make them, a full match for any number of free States which may be included

within the limits of this Union. In our local competitions and party differences, they will find ample room for the exercise of a controlling influence. I am not sure that it is not their destiny always to hold the balance of power among States and between parties, and thus to be able to adopt the proud motto, - præest cui adhæreo, which may be liberally interpreted "he shall be President, to whom I adhere!"

Sir, the territories which have come under our guardianship are, in my judgment, of more worth than to be made the mere make-weights in the scales of sectional equality. They are entitled to another sort of consideration, than to be cut up and partitioned off, like down-trodden Poland, in order to satisfy the longings, and appease the jealousies, of surrounding States. They are they ought certainly to be disposed of and regulated by us, with a primary regard to the prosperity and welfare of those who occupy them now, and of those who are destined to occupy them hereafter, and not with the selfish view of augmenting the mere local power or pride of any of us.

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Mr. Chairman, I see in the territorial possessions of this Union, the seats of new States, the cradles of new Commonwealths, the nurseries, it may be, of new Republican empires. I see, in them, the future abodes of our brethren, our children, and our children's children, for a thousand generations. I see, growing up within their borders, institutions upon which the character and condition of a vast multitude of the American family, and of the human race, in all time to come, are to depend. I feel, that for the original shaping and moulding of these institutions, you and I, and each one of us who occupy these seats, are in part responsible. And I cannot omit to ask myself, what shall I do, that I may deserve the gratitude and the blessing, and not the condemnation and the curse, of that posterity, whose welfare is thus in some degree committed to my care?

As I pursue this inquiry, Sir, I look back instinctively to the day, now more than two hundred years ago, when the Atlantic coast was the scene of events like those now in progress upon the Pacific; when incited, not, indeed, by a love of gold, but by a devotion to that which is better than gold, and whose price is above rubies, the forefathers of New England were planting

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