The debate of the following session was still more violent. The wide-spread popular excitement urged on the Representatives of every section to express, in the angriest terms, the feelings of their constituents. The Senate had repeatedly negatived the restricting proviso, as it was called, and the House as often insisted upon inserting it. At this juncture, Maine applied for admission as a separate and independent State; and as no possible objection could be urged against her, a bill for the purpose passed rapidly through the House, and was sent to the Senate. This happy opportunity for forcing the House into a Compromise was eagerly seized, and an attempt made to saddle the bill with an extraordinary series of amendments providing for the unconditional admission of Missouri. The opponents of slavery in the Senate, though a minority, were, however, a most determined one. But in vain they represented the absurdity of calling this a Compromise, merely because two utterly incongruous measures were strangely crowded into a wholesale bill; and equally in vain, when a separation of the unnatural Union was denied them, did they, for more than a month of anxious debating, struggle to hang their favorite proviso to this already many-tailed monster. The bill, with its amendments, was sent back to the House; but the Representatives had been as busy as their neighbors, and having, by this time, nearly completed a bill of their own on the Missouri claims, the monster of the Senate’s creation was, with little ceremony, stripped of all his tails, and sent back again to that august body in his original simplicity. The crisis was now approaching with a vengeance. In vain the bill was tossed back and forward, from House to House; the fourth of March was rapidly approaching, and owing to her peculiar relations to Massachusetts, the fourth of March was the last day upon which Maine could hope for an independent existence. Rumors of secession grew louder and louder, as the hope of an adjustment grew hourly fainter. The people were wound up to the highest pitch of excitement; all other objects were forgotten in the one absorbing question that agitated every heart; and on the morning of the second of March, an earthquake might almost have rolled away unheeded, as at the battle of Thrasymene. All sides began to be seriously alarmed at the possible consequences of their temerity--the majority yielded, as usual; in a few short hours the great Missouri Compromise was passed, the storm died away, the breakers were cleared, the Union was saved, and the newspapers said that everybody was overjoyed at the happy adjustment. Whether the slaves in Missouri joined in the general jubilee and offered up their thanksgivings for the salvation of the country, does not distinctly appear--possibly, because the slaves of Missouri were not in the habit of expressing their opinions, or offering their worship through the convenient medium of the public press. In substance, the Compromise