Replying to these arguments, Mr. Brown, of Virginia, claimed constitutional regularity of procedure in forming the new State and in seeking to have it admitted into the Union. He referred to the case of Kentucky as a precedent, attempting thereby to show the competency of Congress to admit a State formed within the jurisdiction of another. He pointed out that the Senate, the House, the Executive Department of the United States Government and a State Court in Ohio had, all, by their several acts and relationships with the Wheeling Legislature recognized it to be the legal legislature of Virginia. Discussing the original powers of the people, Mr. Brown asserted "that the principle was laid down in the Declaration of Independence that the legislative powers of the people cannot be annihilated; that when the functionaries to whom they are entrusted become incapable of exercising them, they revert to the people, who have the right to exercise them in their primitive and original capacity." "When, therefore, the government of old Virginia capitulated to the Confederacy," said he, "the loyal people of Western Virginia acted in accordance with the directing principle of the Declaration of Independence."[115] Conforming to the opinion of Mr. Brown, Mr. Colfax urged the admission of the proposed new State, "because in their constitution, the people provided for the ultimate extinction of slavery."[116] Among other speakers urging the admission of the new State were Edwards, Blair, Stevens, and Bingham. Edwards asserted that the two questions presented had to do with (1) the constitutional power of Congress to admit the State and (2) the question of expediency. Blair, while urging the admission of the new State, took occasion to inform Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, that the people of the proposed new State of West Virginia had bound themselves to pay a just proportion of the public debt owed by the State of Virginia, prior to the passage of the Ordinance of Secession. Thaddeus Stevens held that the act of the legislature of Virginia assenting to the division of the State was invalid as such, but that West Virginia might be admitted under the absolute power that the laws of war give to Congress under such circumstances. "The Union," he said, "can never be restored under the Constitution as it was," and with his consent, it could never be restored with slavery to be protected by it. He was in favor of admitting West Virginia because he "found in her constitution a provision which would make her a free state."[117]