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fluence of a controlling interest to be secured, a paramount object to be gained, and that is, an equilibrium of power in the republic. I think they are to be received with even more distrust, because, with the most profound respect, they are uttered under an obviously high excitement. Nor is that excitement an unnatural one. It is a law of our nature that the passions disturb the reason and judgment just in proportion to the importance of the occasion, and the consequent necessity for calmness and candor. I think they are to be distrusted, because there is a diversity of opinion in regard to the nature and operation of this excitement. The senators from some states say that it has brought all parties in their own region into unanimity. The honorable senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay) says that the danger lies in the violence of party spirit, and refers us for proof to the difficulties which attend the organization of the House of Representatives.

"Sir, in my humble judgment, it is not the fierce conflict of parties that we are seeing and hearing, but, on the contrary, it is the agony of distracted parties—a convulsion resulting from the too narrow foundations of both. the great parties, and of all parties-foundations laid in compromises of natural justice and of human liberty. A question, a moral question, transcending the too narrow creeds of parties, has arisen; the public conscience expands with it, and the green withes of party associations give way and break, and fall off from it. No, sir; it is not the state that is dying of the fever of party spirit. It is merely a paralysis of parties, premonitory, however, of their restoration, with new elements of health and vig

or to be imbibed from that spirit of the age which is so justly called Progress. Nor is the evil that of unlicensed, irregular, and turbulent faction. We are told that twenty legislatures are in session, burning like furnaces, heating and inflaming the popular passions. But these twenty legislatures are constitutional furnaces. They are performing their customary functions, imparting healthful heat and vitality while within their constitutional jurisdiction. If they rage beyond its limits, the popular passions of this country are not at all, I think, in danger of being inflamed to excess. No, sir; let none of these fires be extinguished. Forever let them burn and blaze. They are neither ominous meteors nor baleful comets, but planets; and, bright and intense as their heat may be, it is their native temperature, and they must still obey the law which, by attraction toward this solar centre, holds them in their spheres."

Early one morning at this troublous crisis, General Lewis Cass, ever vigilant and active when the interests of the country demanded that he should be watching. and laboring for its welfare, visited me at my boardinghouse, and communicated to me the anxiety which he began to feel for the fate of the resolution which I had introduced for raising the Committee of Thirteen, and urged me to bring the Senate to a vote upon it as early as possible, suggesting even that if I could ascertain that there were a sufficient number of the senatorial friends of the resolution then in the city to secure its adoption, to call it up and invoke definite action upon it that very morning. Thus admonished, though feeble in health, I traversed the city of Washington in every direction, in

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order to ascertain what senators would be probably in attendance; and coming to the conclusion that if Mr. Webster, who had been absent from the Senate for several days, could be induced to occupy his seat that morning, the resolution could, in all probability, be carried through by a meagre majority, I immediately dispatched a note to this gentleman's house by a special messenger, apprising him of the expected movement, and of the desire which I felt for his presence and co-operative aid. He came to the Senate accordingly. No sooner did this gentleman reach his seat than he was surrounded by an earnest crowd of his New England friends, some of whom, as I afterward learned from his own lips, came to dissuade him from voting for my pacificatory resolution. He likewise informed me, in an interview which presently occurred between us, that he had received while in his seat, only a few minutes before, two pressing epistolary missives from political friends in the House of Representatives, urging him not farther to risk his popularity and influence by efforts in support of measures of compromise, Under these trying circumstances, this august personage proposed to me that I should agree to unite with him in supporting a motion which he proposed in an hour or two to offer for taking up for sepa rate consideration the California Bill, in consideration of his aiding me in getting my own resolution immediately passed. He stated that, if allowed to make known this. arrangement before giving his vote for raising the Committee of Thirteen, he thought it would satisfy certain of his friends whose sensibilities he was unwilling needlessly to wound. To this proposition I could not but ac

cede, considering, as I did, and as I then explained to Mr. Webster himself, that if all the measures of compromise, including the bill for admitting California, should have been once referred to the Committee of Thirteen, there were insuperable parliamentary obstacles to taking up any one of these bills separately, unless a motion for the reconsideration of the resolution of reference should be first carried. Immediately after this conversation, Mr. Webster returned to his seat, when I called up my resolution. When it was put upon its passage, Mr. Webster rose and stated his intention to vote for raising the Committee of Thirteen, but took occasion also to mention in the hearing of the Senate the arrangement which he and I had entered into, as already described. This immediately called forth language of indignant surprise from my own senatorial colleague, Mr. Davis, from Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, and Mr. Clemens, of Alabama, who seemed to object very strongly to the private understanding between Mr. Webster and myself of which they had just been apprised, and one or the other of them insinuated something about the movement being an illicit one, and threatened even to vote against the resolution. I went immediately to the seats of these gentlemen, made such an explanation of what had occurred as the circumstances so easily admitted of, and succeeded in so far pacifying them that they all voted for the resolution, which presently passed.

The committee had now to be formed. According to the terms of the resolution which had been adopted, the Senate would have to designate the members of the committee by ballot. Senatorial comity allowing the mover

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of the resolution the privilege of naming the persons to be placed on the committee, I caused a list of the members thereof to be laid on the desks of the senators, and the following gentlemen were unanimously voted into the committee: Henry Clay, of Kentucky, chairman; Dickinson, of New York; Phelps, of Vermont; Bell, of Tennessee; Cass, of Michigan; Webster, of Massachusetts; Berrien, of Georgia; Cooper, of Pennsylvania; Downs, of Louisiana; King, of Alabama; Mangum, of North Carolina; Mason, of Virginia; and Bright, of Indiana. Six of these gentlemen were Democrats, six of them were Whigs; six were Southern men, and six were Northern men; with Henry Clay, the Nestor of the Senate (who was now no longer a party man, and who had emphatically announced himself as knowing "no North and no South, no East and no West"), as chairman. A fairer committee was never formed, and no committee was ever better fitted, as the event soon proved, wisely and successfully to execute the important task allotted to it.

In a few days, Mr. Clay, who had retired to the country in order to draw the bills which the committee was expected to report, returned to the Senate, and announced the following programme for the future action of the Senate, accompanying the same with an elaborate and welldrawn report, which it is judged unnecessary to insert here:

"1st. The admission of any new state or states formed out of Texas to be postponed until they shall hereafter present themselves to be received into the Union, when it will be the duty of Congress fairly and faithfully to execute the compact with Texas by admitting such new

state or states.