to the extent of the treaty-making power of this Government in regard to the particular measures which the gentleman has specified in his proposition. Even if I assented to the full import of that proposition, which I certainly do not, it would form no ground for that union with him on the pending question, to which he invites me. Even if it were the admitted prerogative of this House to give advice or prescribe action to the Executive on the subjects he has named, it would be no reason for our giving bad advice, or prescribing injudicious or unwarrantable action. But "the analogous questions" of Oregon and Texas! Sir, I deny that there is any analogy whatever between those questions. The Texas question is not in any sense a question of parting with territory or settling a boundary line. It is not even a question of annexing territory. It is a question of amalgamating a foreign sovereignty with our own sovereignty; of annexing a foreign State to our own State. It is such a question as would be presented by a proposition to reannex the United States to Great Britain, or to amalgamate Great Britain with the United States. This, the gentleman must remember, was the distinction taken by Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Forsyth in 1837. They maintained, that "the question of the annexation of a foreign independent State to the United States had never before been presented to this Government." They maintained, that the circumstance of Louisiana and Florida being colonial possessions of France and Spain, rendered the purchase of those Territories materially different from the proposed annexation of Texas. "Whether the Constitution of the United States," they added, "contemplated the annexation of such a State, and, if so, in what manner that object is to be effected, are questions, in the opinion of the President, which it would be inexpedient, under present circumstances, to agitate."

And now, Mr. Chairman, I go much farther than the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania, on this subject. I not only deny the competency of the treaty-making power of this Government to negotiate any such amalgamation as this, without the coöperation of the House of Representatives; but I deny that our cooperation can confer or supply that competency. Certainly, certainly, the Constitution did not contemplate the annexation

of such a State. Provoco ad populum! The people, in their own right, are alone competent to pronounce the doom, which is to bind up the fortunes of this Republic in the same bundle of life or death with those of any foreign power; and I hope and believe that they will disown and renounce any Executive or any Legislative act, which shall infringe upon this-their own supreme prerogative. I trust that they will not be deluded by any false alarm, by any red lion representation, that Texas is about to be made a colonial possession of Great Britain. The British Government have no such purpose. Our own Government know this. And if Texas be foisted into the Union upon any such pretence, it will be an act as fraudulent in its inception, as it will, under any circumstances, be pernicious in its result.

THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, JANUARY 6, 1845.

I HAVE very little hope, Mr. Chairman, of saying any thing new on the question before us, or of giving any new interest or force to the views which have already been presented, both to Congress and the Country, by the master minds of the nation. Certainly, I have not risen to attempt any formal response to the challenge which was tendered me a few days since by the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, (Mr. C. J. Ingersoll.) That gentleman was pleased to call on me emphatically for an argument. He was particular in warning me against declamation. He would be contented with nothing short of an argument. Now, Sir, I must be allowed to say that such a call, and such a caution, would have come with something of a better grace from the honorable member, if he had given me the example as well as the precept. If he had "reck'd his own rede," and had given to the House something better than a desultory string of bald assertions and balder assumptions, he might have thrown down the gauntlet to whom he pleased. But I must protest that it was a little ungracious in the honorable member, to urge upon me the steep and thorny way of arguing a negative, after sauntering along the primrose path of dalliance himself, with the burden of the affirmative fairly upon his own shoulders.

The honorable member from Alabama, (Mr. Payne,) who spoke last, was somewhat in the same vein." He would not entertain the House with a mere Fourth of July oration." He, too, wanted nothing but an argument. Now, with all deference

to the better judgment of the honorable member, I must be allowed to express a doubt, whether a good Fourth of July oration would not be one of the best arguments that could be framed for this precise occasion. When men seem ready to forget their own country, and to run after foreign alliances; to disregard the feelings of their fellow-citizens, and expend their sympathies upon aliens; and to look more to the security of slavery than of freedom; it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that some remembrance of the Fourth of July; that some recalling and recounting of the early days, and the early deeds of our Revolution; that some reminiscences of the period when Virginia, and South Carolina, and Massachusetts, were bound. together by mutual league, by united thoughts and counsels, by equal hope and hazard in the glorious enterprise of Independence; that some recurrence to the opinions, as well as to the acts, of our patriot fathers; their opinions about freedom, and about what constituted "an extension of the area of freedom;" their opinions, too, about slavery, in those days, when one of the greatest complaints against Great Britain was, not that she considered slavery an evil, and, having abolished it at great cost in her own colonies, had expressed a wish,- no further harm,a wish that it might be abolished throughout the world, but that she regarded it as the source of a profitable traffic; that she would not suffer South Carolina and Virginia to abolish it; and had even reprimanded a Governor of South Carolina for assenting to an act for that purpose; it seems to me, I say, that some such Fourth of July oration as this, would be an argument every way suitable and seasonable.

At any rate, the stricter argument of this case belongs rightfully to those in favor of the annexation. It belongs to those who seek to accomplish this momentous change in our national condition and our national identity. It belongs to those who are dissatisfied with their existing country, and who are ready to peril its peace, its honor, and its union, in order to obtain another and an ampler theatre for their transcendent patriotism. It is for them to argue this question. It is for them to make a case. It is for them, to show the consummate policy of the measure. It is for them, above all, to prove their constitutional power to accomplish it.

As for us, Mr. Chairman, who seek no change, who are content with our country as it is, who look to its augmentation by internal development and not by external acquisition, whose only policy it is to improve, build up, illustrate, and defend the land and the liberties we now enjoy,— we might well be excused from arguments of any sort on such a subject. It would be enough for us to sit quietly in our seats, and, when called on to give our voices upon these resolutions, to say of our country, as the barons of old England said of their laws, when threatened with usurpation: Nolumus, nolumus mutari!

Sir, I desire to press this point upon the consideration and upon the consciences of gentlemen around me; and more especially of those who, being associated politically with the friends of annexation, are understood to entertain doubts as to the constitutionality of the scheme proposed. We have a Constitution. We have sworn to support it. It is a Constitution of limited powers of specific grants of power. It declares in its own terms that "the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." It declares further, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It is thus the duty of every man who gives his support to a measure of legislation, to be convinced in his own mind that the measure is positively constitutional. It is not for him to call for arguments from others to prove it unconstitutional. It is not for him to find justification for his vote in the feebleness or in the silence of those who deny his power, but in the forcé and the convincing proof of those who maintain it. Still less is it for him to adopt the extraordinary doctrine advanced by an honorable member from Alabama, (Mr. Belser,) who has told us that, in case of constitutional difficulty on this question, he should follow the maxim of Hoyle: "Where you are in doubt, take the trick!” Northern gentlemen have often been charged with latitudinarianism in their interpretation of the Constitution. They profess to be always in favor of a liberal construction of it. But they have never yet carried their liberality to such a pitch as this. It may be the attribute of a good judge to amplify his