Moreover, the Southern leaders openly avowed their opposition to securing any region to free labor exclusively, no matter what the ordinances of nature might be.
In 1848, it must be remembered in this connection, Mr.Webster not only urged the limitation of slave area, and sustained the power of Congress to regulate this matter in the territories, but he did not resist the final embodiment of the principle of the Wilmot Proviso in the bill for the organization of Oregon, where the introduction of slavery was infinitely more unlikely than in New Mexico.

Cotton, sugar, and rice were excluded, perhaps, by nature from the Mexican conquests, but slavery was not.

It was worse than idle to allege that a law of nature forbade slaves in a country where mines gaped to receive them.

The facts are all as plain as possible, and there is no escape from the conclusion that in opposing the Wilmot Proviso, in 1850, Mr.Webster abandoned his principles as to the extension of slavery.

He practically stood forth as the champion of the Southern policy of letting the new territories alone, which could only result in placing them in the grasp of slavery.