But as if it were not enough to table the charge against such men as Benjamin Rush, William Rawle, John Sergeant, Roberts Vaux, Cadwallader Colden, and Peter A. Jay,—­to whom we may add Rufus King, James Hillhouse, William Pinkney, Thomas Addis Emmett, Daniel D. Tompkins, De Witt Clinton, James Kent, and Daniel Webster, besides eleven hundred citizens of the District itself, headed by their Chief Justice and Judges—­even the sovereign States of Pennsylvania, New-York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut, whose legislatures have either memorialized Congress to abolish slavery in the District, or instructed their Senators to move such a measure, must be gravely informed by Messrs. Clay, Norvell, Niles, Smith, Pierce, Benton, Black, Tipton, and other honorable Senators, either that their perception is so dull, they know not whereof they affirm, or that their moral sense is so blunted they can demand without compunction a violation of the nation’s faith!

We have spoken already of the concessions unwittingly made in this resolution to the true doctrine of Congressional power over the District.  For that concession, important as it is; we have small thanks to render.  That such a resolution, passed with such an intent, and pressing at a thousand points on relations and interests vital to the free states, should be hailed, as it has been, by a portion of the northern press as a “compromise” originating in deference to northern interests, and to be received by us as a free-will offering of disinterested benevolence, demanding our gratitude to the mover,—­may well cover us with shame.  We deserve the humiliation and have well earned the mockery.  Let it come!

If, after having been set up at auction in the public sales-room of the nation, and for thirty years, and by each of a score of “compromises,” treacherously knocked off to the lowest bidder, and that without money and without price, the North, plundered and betrayed, will not, in this her accepted time, consider the things that belong to her peace before they are hidden from her eyes, then let her eat of the fruit of her own way, and be filled with her own devices!  Let the shorn and blinded giant grind in the prison-house of the Philistines, till taught by weariness and pain the folly of entrusting to Delilahs the secret and the custody of his strength.

Have the free States bound themselves by an oath never to profit by the lessons of experience?  If lost to reason, are they dead to instinct also?  Can nothing rouse them to cast about for self preservation?  And shall a life of tame surrenders be terminated by suicidal sacrifice?

A “COMPROMISE!” Bitter irony!  Is the plucked and hoodwinked North to be wheedled by the sorcery of another Missouri compromise?  A compromise in which the South gained all, and the North lost all, and lost it forever.  A compromise which embargoed the free laborer of the North and West, and, clutched at the staff he leaned upon, to turn it into a bludgeon and fell him with its stroke.  A compromise which wrested from liberty her boundless birthright domain, stretching westward to the sunset, while it gave to slavery loose reins and a free coarse, from the Mississippi to the Pacific.