If I am told that by the bill relative to Missouri, you do not legislate upon a new State, I answer that you do; and I answer further that it is immaterial whether you do or not.  But it is upon Missouri, as a State, that your terms and conditions are to act.  Until Missouri is a State, the terms and conditions are nothing.  You legislate in the shape of terms and conditions, prospectively—­and you so legislate upon it that when it comes into the Union it is to be bound by a contract degrading and diminishing its sovereignty—­and is to be stripped of rights which the original parties to the Union did not consent to abandon, and which that Union (so far as depends upon it) takes under its protection and guarantee.

Is the right to hold slaves a right which Massachusetts enjoys?  If it is, Massachusetts is under this Union in a different character from Missouri.  The compact of Union for it, is different from the same compact of Union for Missouri.  The power of Congress is different—­everything which depends upon the Union is, in that respect, different.

But it is immaterial whether you legislate for Missouri as a State or not.  The effect of your legislation is to bring it into the Union with a portion of its sovereignty taken away.

But it is a State which you are to admit.  What is a State in the sense of the Constitution?  It is not a State in the general—­but a State as you find it in the Constitution.  A State, generally, is a body politic or independent political society of men.  But the State which you are to admit must be more or less than this political entity.  What must it be?  Ask the constitution.  It shows what it means by a State by reference to the parties to it.  It must be such a State as Massachusetts, Virginia, and the other members of the American confederacy—­a State with full sovereignty except as the constitution restricts it.

* * * * *

In a word, the whole amount of the argument on the other side is, that you may refuse to admit a new State, and that therefore if you admit, you may prescribe the terms.

The answer to that argument is—­that even if you can refuse, you can prescribe no terms which are inconsistent with the act you are to do.  You can prescribe no conditions which, if carried into effect, would make the new State less a sovereign State than, under the Union as it stands, it would be.  You can prescribe no terms which will make the compact of Union between it and the original States essentially different from that compact among the original States.  You may admit, or refuse to admit:  but if you admit, you must admit a State in the sense of the Constitution—­a State with all such sovereignty as belongs to the original parties:  and it must be into this Union that you are to admit it, not into a Union of your own dictating, formed out of the existing Union by qualifications and new compacts, altering its character and effect, and making it fall short of its protecting energy in reference to the new State, whilst it acquires an energy of another sort—­the energy of restraint and destruction.