Excitement had become intense. The extreme northern partisans for bringing in California were challenged to answer if they ever would vote to admit a slave State, and they declined to say that they would. Thereupon came from Toombs an outburst which is perhaps the finest example of his miraculous extempore declamation which has survived. He did not consume the five minutes to which he was limited. We append the conclusion, which is a little more than a third of the whole: "We do not oppose California on account of the anti-slavery clause in her constitution. It was her right to exclude slavery, and I am not even prepared to say she acted unwisely in its exercise--that is her business; but I stand upon the principle that the south has the right to an equal participation in the Territories of the United States. I claim for her the right to enter them all with her property and securely to enjoy it. She will divide with you, if you wish it; but the right to enter all, or divide, I shall never surrender. In my judgment, this right, involving as it does political equality, is worth a thousand such unions as we have, even if they each were a thousand times more valuable than this. I speak not for others, but for myself. Deprive us of this right and appropriate this common property to yourselves, it is then your government, not mine. Then I am its enemy, and I will, if I can, bring my children and my constituents to the altar of liberty, and, like Hamilcar, swear them to eternal hostility to your foul domination. Give us our just rights, and we are ready, as ever heretofore, to stand by the union, every part of it, and its every interest. Refuse it, and for one I shall strike for independence."