Well, Sir, just before the commencement of the present administration, the resolutions for the annexation of Texas were passed in Congress.  Texas complied with the provisions of those resolutions, and was here, or the case was here, on the 22d day of December, 1845, for her final admission into the Union, as one of the States.  I took occasion then to say, that I hoped I had shown all proper regard for Texas; that I had been certainly opposed to annexation; that, if I should go over the whole matter again, I should have nothing new to add; that I had acted, all along, under the unanimous declaration of all parties, and of the legislature of Massachusetts; that I thought there must be some limit to the extent of our territories, and that I wished this country should exhibit to the world the example of a powerful republic, without greediness and hunger of empire.  And I added, that while I held, with as much faithfulness as any citizen of the country, to all the original arrangements and compromises of the Constitution under which we live, I never could, and I never should, bring myself to be in favor of the admission of any States into the Union as slave-holding States; and I might have added, any States at all, to be formed out of territories not now belonging to us.

Now, as I have said, in all this I acted under the resolutions of the State of Massachusetts, certainly concurrent with my own judgment, so often repeated, and reaffirmed by the unanimous consent of all men of all parties, that I could not well go through the series, pointing out, not only the impolicy, but the unconstitutionality, of such annexation.  If a State proposes to come into the Union, and to come in as a slave State, then there is an augmentation of the inequality in the representation of the people; an inequality already existing, with which I do not quarrel, and which I never will attempt to alter, but shall preserve as long as I have a vote to give, or any voice in this government, because it is a part of the original compact.  Let it stand.  But then there is another consideration of vastly more general importance even than that; more general, because it affects all the States, free and slave-holding; and it is, that, if States formed out of territories thus thinly populated come into the Union, they necessarily and inevitably break up the relation existing between the two branches of the government, and destroy its balance.  They break up the intended relation between the Senate and the House of Representatives.  If you bring in new States, any State that comes in must have two Senators.  She may come in with fifty or sixty thousand people, or more.  You may have, from a particular State, more Senators than you have Representatives.  Can any thing occur to disfigure and derange the form of government under which we live more signally than that?  Here would be a Senate bearing no proportion to the people, out of all relation to them, by the addition of new States;