On March 1st, the House took up the Senate's amendment to the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill, and referred it to the committee on Ways and Means. This committee reported, on March 2nd, an amendment to the Senate's amendment, which provided for the continuance of the status of military possession and of the Mexican laws in all the territory acquired from Mexico, until six months after the close of the next session of Congress. The purpose of this amendment was the continuance of the Mexican law excluding slavery. The House did not, however, adopt this proposition, but sent the Appropriation Bill back to the Senate stripped of the Senate's amendment. The Senate asked a conference upon the subject, which was granted by the House, but the Conference committee could come to no agreement. [Sidenote: Mr. Webster and Mr. Berrien on the status of slavery in the territory acquired from Mexico.] The House now passed the proposition of the Ways and Means committee, slightly modified in form, and sent it to the Senate. Mr. Webster moved concurrence with the House in this proposition, and said that it meant no more than the existing status, which would continue if nothing were done. Mr. Berrien contended, on the contrary, that only the private law of the ceding country, {352} the law regulating the relations between individuals, remains in force in the territory ceded, until changed by the positive acts of the country receiving the cession; that the public law of the receiving country is extended at once, by virtue of the occupation, over the cession; and that slavery was a part of the public law of the United States, since both the system of taxation and that of representation rested in part upon it. Mr. Berrien concluded from these postulates of international and constitutional law that, if Congress did nothing in the premises, the President would continue to administer, by means of his military officials, the private law of Mexico, and the public law of the United States, in the territory acquired from Mexico, and that this would allow slaveholders to take their slaves into this territory, and hold them in slavery; but that if Congress, by a positive enactment, should adopt the Mexican laws, _en bloc_, for this territory, slavery would be thereby excluded from it. In a word, he demonstrated, or thought he did, that the proposition of the House of Representatives contained the principle of the Wilmot proviso. The Senate was so deeply impressed by Mr. Berrien's argument, and so much opposition to the proposition of the House was manifested, that Mr. Webster offered to withdraw his motion, if the Southerners would agree to recede from the Senate's amendment. The bargain was struck, and the Thirtieth Congress expired without having done anything for the governmental organization of California and New Mexico, and without having advanced, in the slightest measure, toward the solution of the fateful question of