Already, before the closing week of January, 1850, had bills been brought forward, both in the Senate and in the House, touching all of these subjects, except, perhaps, the last, when, on the 29th, Mr. Clay came forward with his famous proposition for the adjustment of them all in one grand scheme. {356} [Sidenote: Mr. Clay's plan of compromise.] This proposition provided, in the first place, for the immediate admission of California as a Commonwealth, with suitable boundaries, and without any restrictions as to slavery; in the second place, for the establishment of Territorial governments in all of the remainder of the Mexican cession, without any restrictions as to slavery; in the third place, for fixing the western boundary of Texas, so as to exclude any portion of New Mexico; in the fourth place, for the assumption of the Texan debt contracted before annexation and hypothecated upon the Texan customs, on condition of the relinquishment by Texas of all claims on New Mexico; in the fifth place, for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, in slaves brought into the District from the outside for the purpose of sale; and in the sixth place, for a more effective law for the rendition of fugitive slaves. The resolutions also contained declarations that slavery did not then exist in any of the territory acquired from Mexico, and that Congress had no power to prohibit or obstruct trade in slaves between the slaveholding Commonwealths. [Sidenote: Slaveholders' objections to Mr. Clay's plan.] In spite of the fact that Mr. Clay asked the Senators to consider his propositions carefully before committing themselves, and suggested that they should lay over for a week, the Southern Senators immediately proceeded to attack the plan at several points. They objected to California being allowed to jump the Territorial period of probation and preparation for Commonwealth government. They declared Mr. Clay's dictum about the existing illegality of slavery in the territory acquired from Mexico to be an assumption, and asserted that slavery was legal everywhere in the United States, unless a positive law forbade it. They vindicated the claims of Texas to the boundaries designated by the Act of the Texan {357} Congress in 1836. And while some of them were not decidedly opposed to the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, most of them deprecated meddling with the subject at all, and wanted to substitute for Mr. Clay's proposition on the subject a declaration of the lack of any power in Congress to deal with slavery in the District. The improvement of the fugitive slave-law was about the only thing in the entire plan which met with their approval. Mr. Jefferson Davis said outright that he wanted a positive recognition from Congress of the legality of slavery in the new territory south of the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. [Sidenote: Anti-slavery objections to Mr. Clay's plan.]