320 SPEECH OF WILLIAM PINKNEY, IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 15, 1820, ON THE MISSOURI QUESTION. The bill from the house of representatives, for the admission of Missour into the Union, with a clause prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the new state, being under consideration, Mr. Pinkney spoke as follows: As I am not a very frequent speaker in this assembly, and have shown a desire, I trust, rather to listen to the wisdom of others than to lay claim to superior knowledge by undertaking to advise, even when advice, by being seasonable in point of time, might have some chance of being profitable, you will, perhaps, bear with me if I venture to trouble you once more on that eternal subject which has lingered here, until all its natural interest is exhausted, and every topic connected with it is literally worn to tatters. I shall, I assure you, sir, speak with laudable brevitynot merely on account of the feeble state of my health, and from some reverence for the laws of good taste which forbid me to speak otherwise, but also from a sense of justice to those who honor me with their attention. My single purpose, as I suggested yesterday, is to subject to a friendly, yet close examination, some portions of a speech, imposing certainly on account of the distinguished quarter from whence it came-not very imposing (if I may so say, without departing from that respect which I sincerely feel and intend to manifest for eminent abilities and long experience) for any other reason. I believe, Mr. President, that I am about as likely to retract an opinion which I have formed, as any member of this body, who, being a lover of truth, inquires after it with diligence before he imagines that he has found it; but I suspect that we are all of us so constituted as that neither argument nor declamation, levelled against recorded and published decision, can easily discover a practicable avenue through which it may hope to reach either our heads or our hearts. I mention this, lest it may excite surprise, when I take the liberty to add, that the speech of the honorable gentleman from New-York, upon the great subject with which it was principally occupied, has left me as great an infidel as it found me. It is possible, indeed, that if I had had the good fortune to hear that speech at an earlier stage of this debate, when all was fresh and new, although I feel confident that the analysis which it contained of the constitution, illustrated as it was by historical anecdote rather than by reasoning, would have been just as unsatisfactory to me then as it is now, I might not have been altogether unmoved by those warnings of approaching evil which it seemed to intimate, especially when taken in connection with the observations of the same honorable gentleman on a preceding day, "that delays in disposing of this subject, in the manner he desires, are dangerous, and that we stand on slippery ground." I must be permitted, however (speaking only for myself), to say, that the hour of dismay is passed. I have heard the tones of the larum bell on all sides, until they have become familiar to my ear, and have lost their power to appal, if, indeed, they ever possessed it. Notwithstanding occasional appearances of rather an unfavorable description, I have long since persuaded myself that the Missouri Question, as it is called, might be laid to rest, with innocence and safety, by some conciliatory compromise at least, by which, as is our duty, we might reconcile the extremes of conflicting views and feelings, without any sacrifice of constitutional principle; and in any event, that the Union would easily and triumphantly emerge from those portentous clouds with which this controversy is sup-posed to have environed it. I confess to you, nevertheless, that some of the principles announced by the honorable gentleman from New-York,* with an explicitness that reflected the highest credit on his candor, did, when they were first presented, startle me not a little. They were not, perhaps, entirely new. Perhaps I had seen them before in some shadowy and doubtful shape, "If shape it might be called, that shape had none But in the honorable gentleman's speech they were shadowy and doubtful no longer. He exhibited them in forms so boldly and accurately defined-with contours so distinctly traced-with features so pronounced and striking, that I was unconscious for a moment that they might be old acquaintances. I received them asnovi hospites within these walls, and gazed upon them with aston. * Mr. King. S s ishment and alarm. I have recovered, however, thank God, from this paroxysm of terror, although not from that of astonishment. I have sought and found tranquillity and courage in my former consolatory faith. My reliance is that these principles will obtain no general currency; for, if they should, it requires no gloomy imagination to sadden the perspective of the future. My reliance is upon the unsophisticated good sense and noble spirit of the American people. I have what I may be allowed to call a proud and patriotic trust, that they will give countenance to no principles, which, if followed out to their obvious consequences, will not only shake the goodly fabric of the Union to its foundations, but reduce it to a melancholy ruin. The people of this country, if I do not wholly mistake their character, are wise as well as virtuous. They know the value of that federal association which is to them the single pledge and guarantee of power and peace. Their warm and pious affections will cling to it as to their only hope of prosperity and happiness, in defiance of pernicious abstractions, by whomsoever inculcated, or howsoever seductive and alluring in their aspect. Sir, it is not an occasion like this, although connected, as contrary to all reasonable expectation it has been, with fearful and disorganizing theories, which would make our estimates, whether fanciful or sound, of natural law, the measure of civil rights and political sovereignty in the social state, that can harm the Union. It must, indeed, be a mighty storm that can push from its moorings this sacred ark of the common safety. It is not every trifling breeze, however it may be made to sob and howl in imitation of the tempest, by the auxiliary breath of the ambitious, the timid, or the discontented, that can drive this gallant vessel, freighted with every thing that is dear to an American bosom, upon the rocks, or lay it a sheer hulk upon the ocean. I may perhaps mistake the flattering suggestions of hope (the greatest of all flatterers, as we are told) for the conclusions of sober reason. Yet it is a pleasing error, if it be an error, and no man shall take it from .me. I will continue to cherish the belief, in defiance of the public patronage given by the honorable gentleman from New York, with more than his ordinary zeal and solemnity, to deadly speculations, which, invoking the name of God to aid their faculties for mischief, strike at all establishments, that the union of these states is formed to bear up against far greater shocks than, through alf vicissitudes, it is ever likely to encounter. I will continue to chersh the belief, that, although, like all other human institutions, it may for a season be disturbed, or suffer momentary eclipse by the transit across its disk of some malignant planet, it possesses a recuperative force, a redeeming energy in the hearts of the people, that will soon restore it to its wonted calm, and give it back its accustomed splendor. On such a subject I will discard all hysteri cal apprehensions-I will deal in no sinister auguries-I will indulge in no hypochondriacal forebodings. I will look forward to the future with gay and cheerful hope, and will make the pros pect smile, in fancy at least, until overwhelming reality shall render it no longer possible. I have said thus much, sir, in order that I may be understood as meeting the constitutional question as a mere question of interpretation, and as disdaining to press into the service of my argument upon it prophetic fears of any sort, however they may be countenanced by an avowal, formidable by reason of the high reputation of the individual by whom it has been hazarded, of sentiments the most destructive, which, if not borrowed from, are identical with, the worst visions of the political philosophy of France, when all the elements of discord and misrule were let loose upon that devoted nation. I mean "the infinite perfectibility of man and his institutions," and the resolution of every thing into a state. of nature. I have another motive, which at the risk of being misconstrued, I will declare without reserve. With my convictions, and with my feelings, I never will consent to hold confederated America as bound together by a silken cord, which any instrument of mischief may sever, to the view of monarchical foreigners, who look with a jealous eye upon that experiment which is now in progress amongst us in favor of republican freedom. Let them make such prophecies as they will, and nourish such feelings as they may: I will not contribute to the fulfilment of the former, nor minister to the gratification of the latter. Sir, it was but the other day that we were forbidden (properly forbidden, I am sure, for the prohibition came from you) to as sume that there existed any intention to impose a prospective restraint on the domestic legislation of Missouri-a restraint to act upon it contemporaneously with its origin as a state, and to continue adhesive to it through all the stages of its political existence. We are now, however, permitted to know that it is determined by a sort of political surgery to amputate one of the limbs of its local sovereignty, and thus mangled and disparaged, and thus only, to receive it into the bosom of the constitution. It is now avowed that, while Maine is to be ushered into the Union with every possible demonstration of studious reverence on our part, and on hers with colors flying, and all the other graceful accompaniments of honorable triumph, this ill-conditioned upstart of the west, this obscure foundling of a wilderness, that was but yesterday the hunting-ground of the savage, is to find her way into the American family as she can, with an humiliating badge of remediless infe riority patched upon her garments, with the mark of recent, qualified manumission upon her, or rather with a brand upon her fore head to tell the story of her territorial vassalage, and to perpetuate the memory of her evil propensities. It is now avowed that, while the robust district of Maine is to be seated by the side of her truly respectable parent, coördinate in authority and honor, and is to be dandled into that power and dignity of which she does not stand in need, but which undoubtedly she deserves, the more infantine and feeble Missouri is to be repelled with harshness, and forbidden to come at all, unless with the iron collar of servitude about her neck, instead of the civic crown of republican freedom upon her brows, and is to be doomed forever to leading-strings, unless she will exchange those leading-strings for shackles. I am told that you have the power to establish this odious and revolting distinction, and I am referred for the proofs of that power to various parts of the constitution, but principally to that part of it which authorizes the admission of new states into the Union. I am myself of opinion that it is in that part only that the advocates for this restriction can, with any hope of success, apply for a license to impose it; and that the efforts which have been made to find it in other portions of that instrument, are too desperate to require to be encountered. I shall, however, examine those other portions before I have done, lest it should be supposed by those who have relied upon them, that what I omit to answer I believe to be unanswerable. The clause of the constitution which relates to the admission of new states is in these words: "The congress may admit new states into this Union," &c., and the advocates for restriction maintain that the use of the word "may" imports discretion to admit or to reject; and that in this discretion is wrapped up another that of prescribing the terms and conditions of admission, in case you are willing to admit: Cujus est dare ejus est disponere. I will not for the present inquire whether this involved discretion to dictate the terms of admission belongs to you or not. It is fit that I should first look to the nature and extent of it. I think I may assume that if such a power be any thing but nominal, it is much more than adequate to the present object that it is a power of vast expansion, to which human sagacity can assign no reasonable limits-that it is a capacious reservoir of authority, from which you may take, in all time to come, as occasion may serve, the means of oppression as well as of benefaction. I know that it professes at this moment to be the chosen instrument of protecting mercy, and would win upon us by its benignant smiles: but I know too it can frown, and play the tyrant, if it be so disposed. Notwithstanding the softness which it now assumes, and the care with which it conceals its giant proportions beneath the deceitful drapery of sentiment, when it next appears before you it may show itself with a sterner countenance and in more awful dimensions. |