But now that, under certain conditions, Texas is in the Union, with all her territory, as a slave State, with a solemn pledge also that, if she shall be divided into many States, those States may come in as slave States south of 36 deg. 30’, how are we to deal with this subject?  I know no way of honest legislation, when the proper time comes for the enactment, but to carry into effect all that we have stipulated to do. * * * That is the meaning of the contract which our friends, the northern Democracy, have left us to fulfil; and I, for one, mean to fulfil it, because I will not violate the faith of the Government.  What I mean to say is, that the time for the admission of new States formed out of Texas, the number of such States, their boundaries, the requisite amount of population, and all other things connected with the admission, are in the free discretion of Congress, except this:  to wit, that when new States formed out of Texas are to be admitted, they have a right, by legal stipulation and contract, to come in as slave States.

Now, as to California and New Mexico, I hold slavery to be excluded from these territories by a law even superior to that which admits and sanctions it in Texas.  I mean the law of nature, of physical geography, the law of the formation of the earth.  That law settles forever, with a strength beyond all terms of human enactment, that slavery cannot exist in California or New Mexico.  Understand me, sir; I mean slavery as we regard it; the slavery of the colored race as it exists in the southern States.  I shall not discuss the point, but leave it to the learned gentlemen who have undertaken to discuss it; but I suppose there is no slavery of that description in California now.  I understand that peonism, a sort of penal servitude, exists there, or rather a sort of voluntary sale of a man and his offspring for debt, an arrangement of a peculiar nature known to the law of Mexico.  But what I mean to say is, that it is impossible that African slavery, as we see it among us, should find its way, or be introduced, into California and New Mexico, as any other natural impossibility.  California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their formation and scenery.  They are composed of vast ridges of mountains of great height, with broken ridges and deep valleys.  The sides of these mountains are entirely barren; their tops capped by perennial snow.  There may be in California, now made free by its constitution, and no doubt there are, some tracts of valuable land.  But it is not so in New Mexico.  Pray, what is the evidence which every gentleman must have obtained on this subject, from information sought by himself or communicated by others?  I have inquired and read all I could find, in order to acquire information on this important subject.  What is there in New Mexico that could, by any possibility, induce anybody to go there with slaves!  There are some narrow strips of tillable land on the borders of the rivers; but the rivers themselves dry up before midsummer is gone.  All that the people can do in that region is to raise some little articles, some little wheat for their tortillas, and that by irrigation.  And who expects to see a hundred black men cultivating tobacco, corn, cotton, rice, or any thing else, on lands in New Mexico, made fertile by irrigation?