the legislation of 1820. This was execrable jurisprudence, and even Mr. Cass, who was really the father of the idea of home rule in the Territories, dissented from it, and voted for Mr. Chase's amendment. [Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' last change in the wording of the clause.] In spite of this support by the majority, Mr. Douglas was apparently disquieted by the attitude of Mr. Cass, and by the arguments against the correctness of his doctrine. He, himself, now moved to strike out of the bill the words: "which was superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, and is hereby declared inoperative," and to insert instead thereof the words: "which being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void, it being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." [Sidenote: Mr. Everett's views.] In a most able argument, remarkable both for its strong logic and its admirable temper, Mr. Everett demonstrated the weakness of Mr. Douglas' proposition in its last form, the declaration of inconsistency between the legislation of 1820 and that of 1850. He showed conclusively that, in place of an inconsistency, here were simply two policies in reference to different Territories, in which different conditions and relations obtained. He predicted that the {393} insistence upon the same policy for all the Territories would lead to the struggle for determining whether they should be all slave or all free, and he demonstrated that "popular sovereignty" in the Territories was an illusion, since Congress could not by any act of its own divest itself of its duty, laid upon it by the Constitution, to legislate for the Territories. Mr. Everett was a member of the committee on Territories, from which the bill had proceeded, and his views should, on this account, have possessed an added weight. [Sidenote: Mr. Houston's opposition to the bill.] Mr. Houston, of Texas, another member of the committee, now declared himself against the bill, on the ground, among other reasons, that it would reopen the slavery question by the destruction of one of the great measures upon which the settlement of that question rested. [Sidenote: Mr. Bell's attitude toward the bill.]