I need not remind you of the law regulating the investment of capital. It will always go where, under all circumstances, it will yield the greatest return to the owner. Upon this principle I am very clear, that slave labor, if unrestricted, could be employed in Oregon, with at least double the profit to the owner of the slave that it now yields in any state of the Union. I am uninformed as to the usual price of slave labor in the states, but the price paid to Indians in Oregon during the past year, for labor, has ranged from two to three dollars per day. Domestic negro servants, whether male or female, who understand the business of housework, would command, _readily_, five or six hundred dollars a year. I recollect well that there was a mulatto man on board the vessel in which I took passage from Oregon to San Francisco, who was paid _one hundred and eighty_ dollars per month for his services as cook. I will not stop to particularize further, in regard to the inducements Oregon would offer to unrestricted slave labor, but will simply add, that a very large number of slaves might now be employed in Oregon at annual wages sufficiently large to purchase their freedom. I think, therefore, that the point is settled so far as Oregon is concerned, and that slave labor, if it had been left free to seek profitable employment, would readily find its way to that territory. As to California, I am equally clear. California will always be a mining country, and wages will range high. At present, slave labor in California would be more profitable than in Oregon. And I have always been of the opinion, that wherever there is a mining country, if not in a climate uncongenial to slave labor, that species of labor would be profitable. That it would be in the California mines, is evident. A good able-bodied slave would have commanded, in California, during the past year, from eight to ten hundred dollars per annum. When it is recollected that one hundred dollars per annum, upon an average, is considered a good compensation for their labor in the Southern States, it is idle, in my judgment, to contend that slaves would not be carried to the California market, if protected by law.