REJECTION OF MR. CLAY'S PLAN OF COMPROMISE.
The Committee of Thirteen had reported in favor of Mr. Clay's plan.
It was a committee so numerous, almost a quarter of the Senate, that
its recommendation would seem to insure the senatorial concurrence.
Not so the fact. The incongruities were too obvious and glaring to
admit of conjunction. The subjects were too different to admit of
one vote--yea or nay--upon all of them together. The injustice of
mixing up the admission of California, a State which had rejected
slavery for itself, with all the vexations of the slave question in
the territories, was too apparent to subject her to the degradation
of such an association. It was evident that no compromise, of any
kind whatever, on the subject of slavery, under any one of its
aspects separately, much less under all put together, could possibly
be made. There was no spirit of concession--no spirit in which
there could be giving and taking--in which a compromise could be
made. Whatever was to be done, it was evident would be done in the
ordinary spirit of legislation, in which the majority gives law to
the minority. The only case in which there was even forbearance, was
in that of rejecting the Wilmot proviso. That measure was rejected
again as heretofore, and by the votes of those who were opposed to
extending slavery into the territories, because it was unnecessary
and inoperative--irritating to the slave States without benefit to
the free States--a mere work of supererogation, of which the only
fruit was to be discontent. It was rejected, not on the principle of
non-intervention--not on the principle of leaving to the territories
to do as they pleased on the question; but because there had been
intervention! because Mexican law and constitution had intervened!
had abolished slavery by law in those dominions! which law would
remain in force, until repealed by Congress. All that the opponents
to the extension of slavery had to do then, was to do nothing. And
they did nothing.
The numerous measures put together in Mr. Clay's bill were
disconnected and separated. Each measure received a separate and
independent consideration, and with a result which showed the
injustice of the attempted conjunction. United, they had received
the support of the majority of the committee: separated, and no two
were passed by the same vote: and only four members of the whole
grand committee that voted alike on each of the measures.