The debate in the Senate was of unusual interest and splendor. It was especially illustrated by an effort of eminent power from that great lawyer and orator, William Pinkney. Recently returned from a succession of missions to foreign courts, and at this time the acknowledged chief of the American bar, particularly skilled in questions of Constitutional Law, his course as a Senator from Maryland was calculated to produce a profound impression. A speech from him, which for two days[50] drew to this Chamber an admiring throng, and at the time was fondly compared with the best examples of Greece and Rome, is without any record; but another, made shortly afterwards, remains to us, and here we find the first authoritative proposition and statement of what has been since known as the Missouri Compromise. This latter effort was mainly directed against the restriction upon Missouri, but it began and ended with the idea of Compromise. "Notwithstanding," he says, "occasional appearances of rather an unfavorable description, I have long since persuaded myself that the _Missouri question_, as it is called, might be laid to rest with innocence and safety by some _conciliatory compromise_ at least, by which, as is our duty, we might reconcile the extremes of conflicting views and feelings, without any sacrifice of constitutional principle." And he closed with the hope that the restriction on Missouri would not be pressed, but that the whole question "might be disposed of in a manner satisfactory to all, _by a prospective prohibition of Slavery in the territory to the north and west of Missouri_."[51] Here let me remark, that, in the nomenclature of the time, the term "restriction" was applied to the requirement of Freedom proposed for the State of Missouri, while the term "prohibition" was applied to the outlying territory north of a certain line. [50] January 21 and 24, 1820: Annals of Congress, _ut supra_, I. 232, 236. [51] Ibid., I. 389-417, February 15, 1820. Wheaton's Life of Pinkney, Appendix, pp. 573-612. The compromise proposed was abandonment of the "restriction," with recognition of the "prohibition."