nor any form of the question touch. ing the policy of acquiring new ter ritory, is now before the American people as a question to be by them decided. In a word, all the issues presented by Mr. Clay in his speech at Lexington last autumn, are al. ready obsolete. But in the next place, who does not see that another question, which both the great political parties have been anxious to evade lest it should swallow up all questions and all par. ties together, is not disposed of. The question of the extension of slavery beyond Texas, must now be met. It stands in the way of our mercenary statesmen and the asses which they ride, like the angel with a drawn sword in the way of the mercenary prophet. The inevitableness of this question arises from the fact that arrangements must now be made, by the sovereign power of the United States as represented in Congress, for the temporary government of the countries which we have acquired beyond the Rio Grande. At this moment, whatever government exists in those countries is simply a military government like that which exists at Vera Cruz or at the city of Mexico; nor can any other kind of a government be established there, even temporarily, till it shall be established by act of Congress. Meanwhile all law is in abeyance except as put in force by orders from the military commander. No old law can be repealed; no new law can be made; inter arma silent leges. The municipal or local magistrate, if he proceeds in his functions, proceeds by an authority derived not from the old civil constitution of the country, but from a "general order" dated at "Head Quarters." The levying of taxes for local purposes, the enforced payment of debts, the adjustment of controversies among individuals, the settlement of estates, the protection of personal rights, the punishment of crimes, must all be left undone, or must be done by the authority inseparable from a conquest and military occupation. No civil order can be established there, till the legislative power of the gov ernment for which those territories have been conquered, and to which they are now regarded as belonging, shall establish it. That legisla tive power is lodged nowhere else than in Congress. Till Congress shall by an act of legislation provide some civil government for those territories, and put the inhabitants under the protection of some system of laws, the only government there is the government of a military commander, and the only law is that commander's sense of right and of expediency, within the limits of his responsibility to his military superiors. Congress then is under an immediate necessity of act. ting to remove from those territories the merely military government under which they now are, and to give them, in the language of our institutions, a regular "territorial government" with a system of laws. But what shall those laws be? The sovereignty over those territories is not in the fifty thousand or the hundred thousand Mexican inhabitants that happen to be resident upon that soil at the moment of the transfer. It is not for them therefore to say what the laws shall be that are to govern them and those who with them are to occupy that soil hereafter. Congress must determine that question. The most obvious and reasonable method of determining it would be by enact. ing that the laws heretofore exist ing in that country, so far as they are not inconsistent with the constitution of the United States, shall continue in force till repealed or modifi ed by subsequent acts of legislation, Such a provision inserted in an act for the establishment of territorial governments in New Mexico and California, is the only arrangement which would be consistent with any measure of justice toward the conquered people. No change in their laws should take place at present except such change as is inseparable from their new political relations. This is just what was done for the inhabitants of Louisiana, when they passed under the sovereign authority of the people of the United States as represented in Congress. This is just what was done in the case of Florida. It is, perhaps, within the constitutional power of Congress to declare that all the laws by which the provinces we are now acquiring, have heretofore been governed, are henceforth null; and to introduce there some entirely different body of laws, by a single stroke of legislative power :-but what an act of oppression would that be? It would be the very wickedness which Nicholas of Russia is now perpetrating against the inhabitants of conquered and dismembered Poland; the very wickedness which was the starting point, the original sin, of all the misrule which England has perpetrated in Ireland. It would be what England in all her career of annexation and conquest, has never done save in that unhappy isle which, after six centuries of oppression, she has not yet subdued. specting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Next, all human beings on that soil, from the Rio Grande to the Pacific, of whatever lineage or complexion, are free; for by the laws of Mexico-laws that were in full force throughout those provinces at the moment of our conquest the relation of owner and slave can not exist upon that soil. The territory which we have conquered is free territory and has been such for a quarter of a century; and Congress can establish no government over it-can not make the first movement in the discharge of the high responsibility which the acquisition throws upon the people of the United States-without deciding whether that territory shall be free territory still. The capitalists of the South-not the free white people, but the capitalists-the comparatively few owners and venders of slaves, who are of the aristocracy there, and who therefore think themselves the people-have set up a demand that not Texas alone, but all the regions beyond, shall be converted by act of Congress into a market for slaves. Thus shall the price of human flesh be kept up in the shambles of Norfolk and Richmond. Thus South Carolina and the seaboard of Geor gia, now that they begin to suffer from the exhaustion of their soil, and from all the impoverishment so infallibly, though slowly produced by their semi-barbarous organization of society, shall feel themselves rich again for a season, in the increased price of negroes. The politicians of the South, whose sympa If then the legislative power of the Union, which is now the only power that can give laws to the provinces we have acquired from Mexico, shall concede to the inhabitants of those provinces the whole body of their ancient laws so far as those laws can be enacted by Congress under the constitution of the United States,-what will be the result? First of all, the ecclesiasti-thies of course are not with the laborcal establishment in those provinces, all that portion of their laws by which exclusive privileges and secular powers are given to the Roman Catholic religion and priesthood, falls to the ground; because it is written in the constitution that Congress shall make no law reVOL. VI. ་་ 38 ers of their constituencies, but with the capitalists, are not satisfied with what they have gained in the annexation and enlargement of Texas. They demand that the free soil beyond shall become, by act of Con gress, the extended area not of freedom but of slavery. They demand that the legislation of the Union shall take care to infuse into the organization of those territories the virus of slavery. Congress must do this for them, and must do it by the votes of men deputed from the free labor states, and representing the sturdy masses of our free laboring population. Thus shall slave holding states be established to maintain for ages to come the ascendency which the slavery power has so long had in all the depart ments of the federal government. And now the question is, Shall the demand thus made by Southern capitalists and Southern politicians be conceded? We must meet that question. It can not be got rid of. Our present purpose is not to argue the question, but only to show what the question is, and that it must be decided. We are not now attempting to show what Congress, in the exercise of its legislative function, may do, or what it may not do, in relation to the extension of slavery, without violating the constitution. Nor, admitting that it has all the power which the demand in question presupposes, do we now inquire what it may do, or may not do, in relation to slavery, without violating those eternal principles of right which God will not permit to be violated with impunity. We are only calling the attention of our fellow-citizens to the question actu ally impending, to the importance of it, and to the fact that it can not be evaded. We are not political partisans; we are neither democrats in the modern party sense, nor whigs, nor adherents of any third or fourth party; but we are freemen; we are Americans; we are responsible to God for all the influence we can exert at such a crisis upon such a question; and we call upon our fellow-citizens of all parties, and upon those who are of no party, to look at the transcendent importance of the question which has now arisen, and to act for the honor and the welfare of their country in the fear of God. Look at the nature of the ques tion. Look at it as a question of public safety. It is the question whether to the elements of disaffec tion and disturbance already exist. ing in those provinces-whether to a population of half tamed Indians, and long emancipated negroes, and conquered Spanish Creoles, on whom the boon of American citizenship has been in a measure forced, and whose revengeful spirits burn with a religious hate of Yankee domina. tion, we shall attempt to add that no less combustible element—a popula tion of negro slaves. It is the ques tion whether upon that frontier, sep. arated from Mexico by no natural barriers, we will place a population from which runaway slaves will be constantly escaping to freedom upon Mexican soil-fugitives whom no treaty requires the Mexicans to sur render, whom the law of nature and of natural sympathies requires them rather to protect, and whom the masters will therefore pursue in ar ray of arins, shooting them down if they resist, and bringing them back in chains. It is the question whether we will bring upon our selves the certainty of constant bloodshed on that distant frontier, and of speedy and perpetual war. Look at it as a question of political economy. It is the question whether we shall put these new acquisitions of ours to such a use as shall most augment the great aggregate of our national wealth, and the rewards of the national industry. It is the question whether the population that is to spread over the hills and mountain plains of that vast and wild in terior, and that will fill those shel tered nooks and narrow vales into which the soft west wind blows from the Pacific, shall be a pastoral and farming population, free, industrious and civilized, requiring for their consumption, in an indefinite sup ply, the cotton and sugar of the South, the manufactured products of the North, and the golden harvests of the West, and paying for all they consume in the products of their industry; or a slave producing people, requiring for their consumption almost nothing of the products of other portions of the Union, and contributing to the internal commerce of the nation nothing, or al most nothing, but slaves born in the invigorating air of the far inland mountains, to be consumed by toil in torrid cancfields and pestilential savannas around the gulf of Mexico. Look at it as a question of nation. al dignity and reputation. It is the question whether the arms and resources of the American people have been employed, their blood poured out on fields of battle, and their treasure lavished, to force on conquered and reluctant provinces, that disgraceful barbarism, that scoff and hissing of the civilized world, the institution of negro slavery. Look at it as a moral question -a question of right and wrong in legislation. The question is not, what is expedient in order to our getting along for the present with an exacting and unscrupulous aristocracy, threatening to dissolve the Union if they can not have their way?-but, what is right-how shall we get along under the gov. ernment of God, with his eternal and omnipotent justice? The ques tion is not, what is destiny?—but what is right? Right, O atheist, is greater and more awful than des. tiny. Do right, and let destiny care for itself. Reader, as you are an American freeman, responsible to God for the trust devolved upon you, see that you do not overlook the importance of this question. The question is one of a grandeur so manifest, that in the view of any right minded man, it makes all other pending questions of our national politics in significant. Who shall be president who shall be senator-who shall be judge-questions like these are of no moment, save in their relation to the question of the crisis. Questions about the tariff and the treasury may be postponed; but this question stands before us in its au. gust greatness, and it will not down at our bidding. It will be answer. ed. He who would sacrifice such a question to any temporary, person. al or party interests, wrongs his own moral nature, and betrays the great cause of universal humanity. SUPPLEMENT TO ARTICLE ON THE SUBSTITUTION OF SECTARIAN FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS-p. 230. SINCE our article on the Substitution of Sectarian for Public or Common Schools was printed, we have received, through the kindness of a very able and earnest friend of popular education, the statistical information to which we alluded in our note on page 238, as fully support. ing our position that the children of our immigrant Roman Catholic pop ulation, can be made, by wise and liberal measures, to share the bene. fits of our common schools. This information, which, we are assured, "may be implicitly relied on," is so satisfactory and important, that we give it here in the form of a supplement. The first communication is from Lowell, Mass. Lowell, March 10, 1848. My Dear Sir,-Yours of the 4th inst. was duly received, with inquiries which I proceed to answer. 1. Do the children of our foreign or immigrant population, especially the Catholic portion of them, attend our public schools? In the first settlement of Lowell in 1822, owing to several causes, the Irish were collected and built their dwellings chiefly in one quarter, on a tract of land known ever since as the Acre. A large population was here gathered, destitute of nearly every means of moral and intellectual improvement. It was not to be expected that a community thus situated and neglected, so near a populous town of New England people, could be viewed with indifference; on the contrary, it would be watched with great anxiety and apprehension. Accordingly, by the advice and efforts of philanthropic persons, a room was soon rented and supplied with fuel and other ne cessaries, and a teacher placed there who was remunerated by a small weekly voluntary tax, I think, six cents a week for each child. From the poverty and indifference of these parents, however, the school was al. ways languishing and became extinct. From time to time it revived, and then after months of feebleness again failed. At the annual town meeting in May, 1830, an article was inserted in the warrant, for the appointment of a committee to "consider the expediency of establishing a separate school for the benefit of the Irish population." A committee thus appointed, reported in April, 1831, in favor of such a school. This report was accepted by the town, and as our schools were then carried on in districts, the sum of fifty dollars was appropriated for the maintenance of a separate district school for the Irish. Here was the first municipal regulation relating to this matter, and the origin of the separation between the two races. This district school had many vicissitudes for three years, kept only a part of the year as our other district schools were, and was often suspended because a suitable room could not be had. On the whole, it was unsatisfactory as in 1834. The Catholic priest here appears to have been carrying on a private school under his church, which had been erected in this quarter. In 1835, this gentleman made formal appli cation to the school committee for aid, and was present at several of their meetings. The result of these deliberations is thus detailed in the annual report of the school commit. tee in March, 1836. "It is known to the citizens generally, that various fruitless attempts have been hitherto made to extend the benefits of our public schools more fully to our Irish population. Those attempts have been hitherto frustrated, chiefly perhaps by a nat ural apprehension on the part of parents and pastors of placing their children under Protestant teachers, and in a measure also, by the mu tual prejudices and consequent disa greements among the Protestant and Catholic children themselves. Your committee have great pleasure in stating that these difficulties appear to have been overcome, and the above most desirable object to have been finally accomplished. "In June last, Rev. Mr. Conolly of the Catholic church applied to the committee for such aid as they might be able to give to his exer tions for the education and improve. ment of the children under his charge. The committee entered readily and fully into his views, and in subsequent interviews a plan was matured and has since been put into operation. On the part of the com. mittee, the following conditions were insisted on as indispensable, before any appropriation of the public mo ney could be made : "1. That the instructors must be examined as to their qualifications by the committee, and receive their appointment from them. 66 2. That the books, exercises and studies should be all prescribed and regulated by the committee, and |