That it actually admits _and was intended to admit_ slavery into said territories, and thus (to use the words applied by Judge Tucker, of Virginia, to the fathers of that commonwealth) "sows the seeds of an evil which like a leprosy hath descended upon their posterity with accumulated rancor, visiting the sins of the fathers upon succeeding generations." That it was sprung upon the country stealthily and by surprise, without necessity, without petition, and without previous discussion, thus violating the cardinal principle of republican government, which requires all legislation to accord with the opinions and sentiments of the people. That on the part of the South it is an open and undisguised breach of faith, as contracted between the North and South in the settlement of the Missouri question in 1820, by which the tranquillity of the two sections was restored; a compromise binding upon all honorable men. That it is also an open violation of the compromise of 1850, by which, for the sake of peace, and to calm the distempered pulse of certain enemies of the Union at the South, the North accepted and acquiesced in the odious "fugitive slave law" of that year. That it is also an undisguised and unmanly contempt of the pledge given to the country by the present dominant party at their national convention in 1852, not to "_agitate the subject of slavery in or out of Congress_," being the same convention that nominated Franklin Pierce to the Presidency. That it is greatly injurious to the free States, and to the Territories themselves, tending to retard the settlement and to prevent the improvement of the country by means of free labor, and to discourage foreign immigrants resorting thither for their homes. [Illustration: THE FIRST REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION. "UNDER THE OAKS," JACKSON, MICH., JULY 6, 1854.] That one of its principal aims is to give to the slave States such a decided and practical preponderance in all the measures of government as shall reduce the North, with all her industry, wealth and enterprise, to be the mere province of a few slaveholding oligarchs of the South--a condition too shameful to be contemplated. Because, as openly avowed by its Southern friends, it is intended as an entering wedge to the still further augmentation of the slave power by the acquisition of the other Territories, cursed with the same "leprosy." _Resolved_, That the obnoxious measure to which we have alluded ought to be _repealed_, and a provision substituted for it, prohibiting slavery in said Territories, and each of them.