Gentlemen, I expect to be libelled and abused.  Yes, libelled and abused.  But it does not disturb me.  I have not lost a night’s rest for a great many years from any such cause.  I have some talent for sleeping.  And why should I not expect to be libelled?  Is not the Constitution of the United States libelled and abused?  Do not some people call it a covenant with hell?  Is not Washington libelled and abused?  Is he not called a bloodhound on the track of the African negro?  Are not our fathers libelled and abused by their own children?  And ungrateful children they are.  How, then, shall I escape?  I do not expect to escape; but, knowing these things, I impute no bad motive to any men of character and fair standing.  The great settlement measures of the last Congress are laws.  Many respectable men, representatives from your own State and from other States, did not concur in them.  I do not impute any bad motive to them.  I am ready to believe they are Americans all.  They may not have thought these laws necessary; or they may have thought that they would be enacted without their concurrence.  Let all that pass away.  If they are now men who will stand by what is done, and stand up for their country, and say that, as these laws were passed by a majority of the whole country, we must stand by them and live by them, I will respect them all as friends.

Now, Gentlemen, allow me to ask of you, What do you think would have been the condition of the country, at this time, if these laws had not been passed by the last Congress? if the question of the Texas boundary had not been settled? if New Mexico and Utah had been left as desert-places, and no government had been provided for them?  And if the other great object to which State laws had opposed so many obstacles, the restoration of fugitives, had not been provided for, I ask, what would have been the state of this country now?  You men of Erie County, you men of New York, I conjure you to go home to-night and meditate on this subject.  What would have been the state of this country, now, at this moment, if these laws had not been passed?  I have given my opinion that we should have had a civil war.  I refer it to you, therefore, for your consideration; meditate on it; do not be carried away by any abstract notions or metaphysical ideas; think practically on the great question, What would have been the condition of the United States at this moment, if we had not settled these agitating questions?  I repeat, in my opinion, there would have been a civil war.

Gentlemen, will you allow me, for a moment, to advert to myself?  I have been a long time in public life; of course, not many years remain to me.  At the commencement of 1850, I looked anxiously at the condition of the country, and I thought the inevitable consequence of leaving the existing controversies unadjusted would be civil war.  I saw danger in leaving Utah and New Mexico without any government, a prey to the power of Texas.  I saw the condition