for the organization of Oregon, where the introduction of slavery was infinitely more unlikely than in New Mexico.  Cotton, sugar, and rice were excluded, perhaps, by nature from the Mexican conquests, but slavery was not.  It was worse than idle to allege that a law of nature forbade slaves in a country where mines gaped to receive them.  The facts are all as plain as possible, and there is no escape from the conclusion that in opposing the Wilmot Proviso, in 1850, Mr. Webster abandoned his principles as to the extension of slavery.  He practically stood forth as the champion of the Southern policy of letting the new territories alone, which could only result in placing them in the grasp of slavery.  The consistency which he labored so hard to prove in his speech was hopelessly shattered, and no ingenuity, either then or since, can restore it.

[Footnote 1:  Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 1st Session, p. 203.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., Appendix, p. 510.]

A dispassionate examination of Mr. Webster’s previous course on slavery, and a careful comparison of it with the ground taken in the 7th of March speech, shows that he softened his utterances in regard to slavery as a system, and that he changed radically on the policy of compromise and on the question of extending the area of slavery.  There is a confused story that in the winter of 1847-48 he had given the anti-slavery leaders to understand that he proposed to come out on their ground in regard to Mexico, and to sustain Corwin in his attack on the Democratic policy, but that he failed to do so.  The evidence on this point is entirely insufficient to make it of importance, but there can be no doubt that in the winter of 1850 Mr. Webster talked with Mr. Giddings, and led him, and the other Free-Soil leaders, to believe that he was meditating a strong anti-slavery speech.  This fact was clearly shown in the recent newspaper controversy which grew out of the celebration of the centennial anniversary of Webster’s birth.  It is a little difficult to understand why this incident should have roused such bitter resentment among Mr. Webster’s surviving partisans.  To suppose that Mr. Webster made the 7th of March speech after long deliberation, without having a moment’s hesitation in the matter, is to credit him with a shameless disregard of principle and consistency, of which it is impossible to believe him guilty.  He undoubtedly hesitated, and considered deeply whether he should assume the attitude of 1833, and stand out unrelentingly against the encroachments of slavery.  He talked with Mr. Clay on one side.  He talked with Mr. Giddings, and other Free-Soilers, on the other.  With the latter the wish was no doubt father to the thought, and they may well have imagined that Mr. Webster had determined to go with them, when he was still in doubt and merely trying the various positions.  There is no need, however, to linger over matters of this sort.  The change made by