But what else did Mr. Webster say, in his speech of the 23d of March, 1848? Referring to the debate which took place in December, 1845, on the final act for admitting Texas, Mr. Webster said: “And I added, that while I held, with as much faithfulness as any citizen of the country, to all the original arrangements and compromises of the constitution under which we live, I never could, and I never should, bring myself to be in favor of the admission of any states into the Union as slaveholding states.”[13] This is what Mr. Webster reports himself to have said when the final vote on the admission of Texas was immediately to be taken, and when he commenced his speech by saying, “I am quite aware, Mr. President, that the resolution will pass,”--meaning the resolution for the admission of Texas. Mr. Webster’s “never could and never should” covered the exact case of the then contemplated future slaveholding states to be formed out of Texas. While in the broadness of its terms it embraced all slaveholding states, whensoever, or whencesoever they might come, it had special and pointed application to any slave state to be thereafter formed out of Texan territory. In the same speech of December 22, 1845, Mr. Webster spoke as follows:-- “It may be said that according to the provisions of the constitution, new states are to be admitted on the same footing as the old states. It may be so; but it does not follow at all from that provision that every territory or portion of country may at pleasure establish slavery, and then say we will become a portion of the Union; and will bring with us the principles which we may have thus adopted, and must be received on the same footing as the old states. It will always be a question whether the old states have not a right, (and I think they have the clearest right,) to require that the state coming into the Union should come in upon an equality; and, if the existence of slavery be an impediment to coming in on an equality, then the state proposing to come in should be required to remove that inequality by abolishing slavery, or take the alternative of being excluded.” He also said, in the same speech, “I agree with the unanimous opinion of the legislature of Massachusetts.” And what was this “unanimous opinion of the legislature of Massachusetts”? Among many other things equally decisive, the Massachusetts legislature, on the 26th of March, 1845,--and, of course, long after the annexation resolutions had been passed,--declared as follows:-- “And whereas the consent of the executive and legislative departments of the government of the United States has been given, by a resolution passed on the 27th of February last, to the adoption of preliminary measures to accomplish this nefarious project, [the admission of Texas, with the stipulation to admit four more states out of its territory;] therefore, be it