I say, Sir, that, according to my conscientious conviction, we are now fixing on the Constitution of the United States, and its frame of government, a monstrosity, a disfiguration, an enormity!  Sir, I hardly dare trust myself.  I don’t know but I may be under some delusion.  It may be the weakness of my eyes that forms this monstrous apparition.  But, if I may trust myself, if I can persuade myself that I am in my right mind, then it does appear to me that we in this Senate have been and are acting, and are likely to be acting hereafter, and immediately, a part which will form the most remarkable epoch in the history of our country.  I hold it to be enormous, flagrant, an outrage upon all the principles of popular republican government, and on the elementary provisions of the Constitution under which we live, and which we have sworn to support.

But then, Sir, what relieves the case from this enormity?  What is our reliance?  Why, it is that we stipulate that these new States shall only be brought in at a suitable time.  And pray, what is to constitute the suitableness of time?  Who is to judge of it?  I tell you, Sir, that suitable time will come when the preponderance of party power here makes it necessary to bring in new States.  Be assured it will be a suitable time when votes are wanted in this Senate.  We have had some little experience of that.  Texas came in at a “suitable time,” a very suitable time!  Texas was finally admitted in December, 1845.  My friend near me here, for whom I have a great regard, and whose acquaintance I have cultivated with pleasure,[5] took his seat in March, 1846, with his colleague.  In July, 1846, these two Texan votes turned the balance in the Senate, and overthrew the tariff of 1842, in my judgment the best system of revenue ever established in this country.  Gentlemen on the opposite side think otherwise.  They think it fortunate.  They think that was a suitable time, and they mean to take care that other times shall be equally suitable.  I understand it perfectly well.  That is the difference of opinion between me and these honorable gentlemen.  To their policy, their objects, and their purposes the time was suitable, and the aid was efficient and decisive.

Sir, in 1850 perhaps a similar question may be agitated here.  It is not likely to be before that time, but agitated it will be then, unless a change in the administration of the government shall take place.  According to my apprehension, looking at general results as flowing from our established system of commerce and revenue, in two years from this time we shall probably be engaged in a new revision of our system:  in the work of establishing, if we can, a tariff of specific duties; of protecting, if we can, our domestic industry and the manufactures of the country; in the work of preventing, if we can, the overwhelming flood of foreign importations.  Suppose that to be part of the future:  that would be exactly the “suitable time,” if necessary, for two Senators from New Mexico to make their appearance here!