In the first place, California is to be permitted to remain free if the territories of New Mexico and Utah may be opened to slavery. But California is free already; free by her own act; free without any concession of theirs, and without any grace but the grace of God. It is mainly occupied by a northern population, who do their own work with their own hands, or their own brains. Fifty hardy gold diggers from the north will never stand all day knee deep in water, shovel earth, rock washers, &c., under a broiling sun, and see a man with his fifty slaves standing under the shade of a tree, or having an umbrella held over his head, with whip in hand, and without wetting his dainty glove, or soiling his japanned boot, pocket as much at night as the whole of them together. Or, rather, they will never suffer institutions to exist which tolerate such unrighteousness. California, therefore, is free; as free as Massachusetts; and Mr. Clay might as well have said in terms, that whereas Massachusetts is free, therefore New Mexico and Utah shall be slave, or run the hazard of being so. The next point of Mr. Clay’s compromise is, that Texas shall extend her south-western boundary from or near the Nueces to the Rio Grande, and shall receive, probably, some six or eight millions of dollars for withdrawing her claim to that part of New Mexico which lies east of the last-named river. Now, Texas has no rightful or plausible claim to a foot of all this territory. But suppose it to be a subject of doubt, and therefore of compromise. The mutuality, then, consists in dividing the whole territory claimed by Texas, and then giving her a valid title to one portion of it, and paying her for all the rest. Texas, or,--what in this connection is the same thing,--slavery surrenders absolutely nothing, gets a good title to some seventy thousand square miles of territory, and pay for as much more! But what renders it almost incredible that any man could soberly submit such a proposition and dare to call it a compromise, is this: All that part of New Mexico which Texas claims, and which lies between the parallels of 36° 30´ and 42°, is, by the resolutions of annexation, to be forever free. I shall consider the constitutionality of these resolutions by and by; I now treat them as valid. Now the compromise proposes to buy this territory, so secured to freedom, and annex it to New Mexico, which is to be left open to slavery. We are to peril all the broad region between 36° 30´ and 42°, and pay Texas some six or eight millions of dollars for the privilege of doing so! Mr. Clay is not less eminent for his statesmanship than for his waggery. Were he to succeed in playing off this practical joke upon the north, and were it not for the horrible consequences which it would involve, a roar of laughter, like a _feu de joie_, would run down the course of the ages. As it is, the laughter will be “elsewhere.”