act of Congress; that she comes here and demands admission into this Union, and, if not admitted here, our authority will be cast aside, and she will be an independent republic upon the Pacific. But, sir, I cannot believe, and do not believe, that such an insolent dictation to us is designed by the people of California. And I personally know the two gentlemen whom she has selected as Senators, and am sure they would be the first to disown and renounce the position assumed by their patron upon this floor. The honorable Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], seems to consider the admission of California as a matter beyond all price and all value, to be attained at every hazard and every sacrifice, and therefore, notwithstanding the opinion he has expressed with regard to slavery, though he considers it a high, hospitable duty to entertain the fugitive slaves from the South, and to keep them from their masters, though he has a holy horror of the extension of slavery into the Territories now free, and considers every obligation imposed by the Constitution in reference to slavery overborne and annulled by the supreme law of God--he tells us, that so all-important is the admission of California, under the circumstances, that he would have voted for her admission with an express recognition by her constitution of the right to carry slaves into her territory. An allusion to this subject seems to have a strange effect upon the Senator from New York. He is carried back at once to the last session, when certain measures were pending here for the purpose of organizing some temporary government for California and New Mexico; and alluding to the gentleman who is now the source of power and patronage in this Government, he thus expresses himself: "May this republic never have a President commit a more serious or more dangerous usurpation of power than the act of the present eminent Chief Magistrate, in endeavoring to induce the legislative authorities to relieve him from the exercise of military power, by establishing civil institutions, regulated by law, in a distant province. Rome would have been standing this day if she had had such generals and such tribunes." Yes, sir, if Rome had been blessed with a Zachary Taylor for commander of her armies; if Rome had been blessed with a Zachary Taylor for a tribune, the Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns, Attila, and all his hordes, would have poured upon the empire in vain--they would have been repelled, overcome upon the embattled plain, and driven back to their fastnesses in the North, and Rome would stand this day proud mistress of the world! Now, sir, whether the President of the United States can swallow such an adulation as this, I will not undertake to decide; but such is my estimate of his intelligence and his merit, of his modesty--a just modesty, which usually accompanies true merit--that I believe he has no powers of deglutition sufficient to get it down.