Such was the state of public feeling, when the annexation of Texas and the conquests won from Mexico called upon Congress to legislate for a new and enormous territory. A large portion of the northern members adhered to the platform laid down by them in the struggle of 1819, resolving that nothing should induce them to swerve from the great principle established by the ordinance of 1787. The extraordinary rapidity with which the gold fever peopled California, and her consequent application for admission into the Union, doubled the difficulty; while the toleration of the domestic slave trade in the District of Columbia, the unsettled boundaries of Texas, and the complaints which both parties insisted upon, with regard to the old Act for the recapture of fugitives, were each in itself sufficient to embarrass the famous Congress of 1850. The men who prepared to meet this swarm of dangers were, probably, superior to any that had ever coped with the question before--veterans in the Cabinet and on the floor--men who had grown grey in watching the Constitution--who had received it in their childhood from its framers, and who had guarded its safety for nearly half a century with almost superstitious love. To review the famous debate which led to that Compromise, which swallowed up all other Compromises, on the broad platform of which all parties have learned to stand, though, perhaps, not very harmoniously, and in the universality of which all minor distinctions are forgotten, would be a lengthy, and is, happily, an unnecessary task. No one, who will read this paper, needs to be reminded of events so recent, and so widely interesting, that every school-boy in the land has thoroughly mastered them and is prepared with a long train of reasoning in their support or condemnation. Our only object has been to show their historical connection with the many measures that have indirectly aided in producing them, and that object, it is hoped, has been partially accomplished. The success of this measure, time alone can determine. It has lived thus long amid great extremes, both of popular favor and odium. So far as the Fugitive Slave Law is concerned, the severest ordeal through which it has passed, and one in which its practical working has been most fully displayed, is undoubtedly the Trial of Hanway, to a brief history of which the attention of the reader is now invited. THE TREASON TRIALS.