But what must satisfy every man whose blindness is not of the soul rather than of the senses, is the fact that the people of New Mexico, in the constitution which they have just framed, have embodied a prohibition of slavery in their fundamental law. Had slavery been forbidden there by any “Asiatic scenery,” or by any “law of physical geography,” who should know it better than they? They have had slavery amongst them heretofore, and therefore they know it can invade them again, and therefore they forbid it; and in the choice of senators to Congress under the new organization, should any candidate put forward the vagary, the phantasm, the fatuity, that slavery _cannot_ exist among them, they would doubtless deem him a less fit subject for the Senate of the United States than for sanitary treatment. How stands the evidence, then, on the question, whether “California and New Mexico,” from their geology, their geography, or their Asiatic scenery, are inaccessible or not, to the invasion of slavery? It is well known that the war with Mexico was provoked, and violently precipitated upon the country, in order to extend the domain and the power of slavery. In negotiating for the cession of California and New Mexico, the Mexican commissioners strove to introduce a prohibition against slavery into the treaty. This demonstrates that they thought slavery could exist there. Our minister declared that he would assent to no such stipulation, though they would cover all the land a foot thick with gold. This shows the tenacity with which Mr. Polk’s administration, and all its southern friends, adhered to their original purpose of obtaining new territory for slavery. In view of this, the House of Representatives again and again voted to apply the proviso to whatever territory should be obtained. When the treaty was ratified, many of the leading senators voted against the clause for acquisition, foreseeing the present controversy, and hoping to avert it. Even after the treaty was ratified, leading southern Whigs in the House voted against paying the first instalment under it, still clinging to the hope that the territory might be restored to Mexico, and this cause of dissension withdrawn. During all this period, fourteen of the northern legislatures, many of them again and again, voted that the proviso should be applied. The present six months’ contest, in the Senate and House, between the north and the south, is conducted solely on the conviction that slavery _may_ exist in the territories; and that it will or will not exist there, according as the law allows or forbids it. Otherwise it would be the most nonsensical and nugatory discussion ever engaged in out of a lunatic asylum. Once make it as clear as any law of physical nature, that slavery can never transgress the bounds of the new territories, and there is not a man so demented that he would any longer contend either for the proviso, or against it. Mr. Webster