It concerns an immense region, larger than the original Thirteen States, vying in extent with all the existing Free States,--stretching over prairie, field, and forest,--interlaced by silver streams, skirted by protecting mountains, and constituting the heart of the North American continent,--only a little smaller, let me add, than three great European countries combined,--Italy, Spain, and France,--each of which, in succession, has dominated over the globe. This territory has been likened, on this floor, to the Garden of God. The similitude is found not merely in its pure and virgin character, but in its actual geographical situation, occupying central spaces on this hemisphere, which, in their general relations, may well compare with that "happy rural seat." We are told that "Southward through Eden went a river large": so here a stream flows southward which is larger than the Euphrates. And here, too, all amid the smiling products of Nature, lavished by the hand of God, is the lofty Tree of Liberty, planted by our fathers, which, without exaggeration, or even imagination, may be likened to "the Tree of Life, High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable gold." It is with regard to this territory that you are now called to exercise the grandest function of lawgiver, by establishing rules of polity which will determine its future character. As the twig is bent the tree inclines; and the influences impressed upon the early days of an empire, like those upon a child, are of inconceivable importance to its future weal or woe. The bill now before us proposes to organize and equip two new territorial establishments, with Governors, Secretaries, Legislative Councils, Legislators, Judges, Marshals, and the whole machinery of civil society. Such a measure at any time would deserve the most careful attention. But at the present moment it justly excites peculiar interest, from the effort made--on pretences unsustained by facts, in violation of solemn covenant, and in disregard of the early principles of our fathers--to open this immense region to Slavery. According to existing law, this territory is now guarded against Slavery by a positive Prohibition, embodied in the Act of Congress approved March 6th, 1820, preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union as a sister State, and in the following explicit words:-- "SEC. 8. _And be it further enacted_, That in all that territory _ceded by France to the United States, under the name of Louisiana_, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, not included within the limits of the State contemplated by this Act, SLAVERY AND INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted, SHALL BE, AND IS HEREBY, FOREVER PROHIBITED."