But then, Sir, Texas claims to the line of the Rio Grande, and if it be her true line, why then of course she absorbs a considerable part, nay, the greater part, of the population of what is now called New Mexico.  I do not argue the question of the true southern or western line of Texas; I only say, that it is apparent to everybody who will look at the map, and learn any thing of the matter, that New Mexico cannot be divided by this river, the Rio Grande, which is a shallow, fordable, insignificant stream, creeping along through a narrow valley, at the base of enormous mountains.  New Mexico must remain together; it must be a State, with its seventy thousand people, and so it will be; and so will California.

But then, Sir, suppose Texas to remain a unit, and but one State for the present; still we shall have three States, Texas, New Mexico, and California.  We shall have six Senators, then, for less than three hundred thousand people.  We shall have as many Senators for three hundred thousand people in that region as we have for New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, with four or five millions of people; and that is what we call an equal representation!  Is not this enormous?  Have gentlemen considered this?  Have they looked at it?  Are they willing to look it in the face, and then say they embrace it?  I trust, Sir, the people will look at it and consider it.  And now let me add, that this disproportion can never be diminished; it must remain for ever.  How are you going to diminish it?  Why, here is Texas, with a hundred and forty-nine thousand people, with one State.  Suppose that population should flow into Texas, where will it go?  Not to any dense point, but to be spread over all that region, in places remote from the Gulf, in places remote from what is now the capital of Texas; and therefore, as soon as there are in other portions of Texas people enough within our common construction of the Constitution and our practice in respect to the admission of States, my honorable friend from Texas[4] will have a new State, and I have no doubt he has chalked it out already.

As to New Mexico, its population is not likely to increase.  It is a settled country; the people living along in the bottom of the valley on the sides of a little stream, a garter of land only on one side and the other, filled by coarse landholders and miserable peons.  It can sustain, not only under this cultivation, but under any cultivation that our American race would ever submit to, no more people than are there now.  There will, then, be two Senators for sixty thousand inhabitants in New Mexico to the end of our lives and to the end of the lives of our children.

And how is it with California?  We propose to take California, from the forty-second degree of north latitude down to the thirty-second.  We propose to take ten degrees along the coast of the Pacific.  Scattered along the coast for that great distance are settlements and villages and ports; and in the rear all is wilderness and barrenness, and Indian country.  But if, just about San Francisco, and perhaps Monterey, emigrants enough should settle to make up one State, then the people five hundred miles off would have another State.  And so this disproportion of the Senate to the people will go on, and must go on, and we cannot prevent it.