I certainly intend to do the distinguished chairman of the committee no injustice; and I am not sure that I fully comprehend his argument in this respect; but I think his report sustains the view which I now take of the subject: that is, that the legislation of 1850 did not establish a principle which was designed to have any such effect as he intimates. That report states how matters stood in those new Mexican territories. It was alleged on the one hand that by the Mexican _lex loci_ slavery was prohibited. On the other hand that was denied, and it was maintained that the Constitution of the United States secures to every citizen the right to go there and take with him any property recognized as such by any of the States of the Union. The report considers that a similar state of things now exists in Nebraska--that the validity of the eighth section of the Missouri Act, by which slavery is prohibited in that Territory, is doubtful, and that it is maintained by many distinguished statesmen that Congress has no power to legislate on the subject. Then, in this state of the controversy, the report maintains that the legislation of Congress in 1850 did not undertake to decide these questions. Surely, if they did not undertake to decide them, they could not settle the principle which is at stake in them; and, unless they did decide them, the measures then adopted must be considered as specific measures, relating only to those case and not establishing a principle of general operation. This seems to me to be as direct and conclusive as anything can be. At all events, these are not impressions which are put forth by me under the exigencies of the present debate or of the present occasion. I have never entertained any other opinion. I was called upon for a particular purpose, of a literary nature, to which I will presently allude more distinctly, shortly after the close of the session of 1850, to draw up a narrative of the events that had taken place relative to the passage of the compromise measures of that year. I had not, I own, the best sources of information. I was not a member of Congress, and had not heard the debates, which is almost indispensable to come to a thorough understanding of questions of this nature; but I inquired of those who had heard them, I read the reports, and I had an opportunity of personal intercourse with some who had taken a prominent part in all those measures. I never formed the idea--I never received the intimation until I got it from this report of the committee--that those measures were intended to have any effect beyond the Territories of Utah and New Mexico, for which they were enacted. I cannot but think that if it was intended that they should have any larger application, if it was intended that they should furnish the rule which is now supposed, it would have been a fact as notorious as the light of day. * * * * *