"for

of Pennsylvania, spoke in its behalf. At the close of his speech, the sake," as he said, "of giving the House the fullest opportunity to test its sense," of the bill, he moved the Previous Question. Without the possibility of debate, without having been committed, without having even been printed, the Previous Question compelled immediate action by a vote of eighty-seven, to sixty-nine; and it was forthwith passed by one hundred and nine yeas, to seventy-five nays. THIRTYONE northern men joined in this crime, of whom the name of one will be an everlasting dishonor to this State and this City. SAMUEL ATKINS ELIOT is the miscreant who has made all former northern treason look white by the side of the blackness of his infamy. He voted for all the Territorial Bills, for the Previous Question, and was one of the three northern Whigs that denied the profession of their party on that accursed day. As long as New England retains any spark of the spirit or of the pride of her ancestry, his memory will be held in loathing and abhorrence.

This work of wickedness could not have been accomplished without the help of northern hands. The open villainy of some bolder spirits, and the skulking connivance of many less courageous accomplices, effected the work. Had it not been for their assistance, it could not have been done. Thirty-one northern men voted for the Abominable Bill, and thirty-three more did not vote against it. The faces of dough were ready to be kneaded; the noses of wax were plastic in the hand of the moulder. For the thousandth time the disgraceful will of the Slaveholders has found northern hands eager to do it. The men representing the Free States have still been, as ever before, found ready to register the Edict of the Despot of the Country, be it what it might. The pretence of Peace, and the reality of Pelf, has again been made the cloak under which liberty and humanity have been struck down in the house of their false friends. A feigned belief in the danger of the Union, and a genuine hope for a more protective Tariff, worked together to bring about this infernal legislation. Peace, indeed! As if it were not the voice of Nature, as well as of Scripture, that there is no peace to the Wicked! And Pelf, too! Thank God, the adepts who sold their souls to the devil, in this hope, have not yet got their pay! and God grant that they never may !

Besides these memorable actions there were various occasions of lesser moment which still helped to swell the whole agitation of the matter of Slavery. On the eighth of January, Mr. UPHAM, of Vermont, presented to the Senate the Resolutions of the Legislature of that

State on the subject of Slavery, and a warm debate was excited on the question, first, whether they should be received, and, secondly, whether they should be printed. So materially modified is the reverence for the sovereignty of the several States by the latitude of their boundaries. On the seventh of February, Mr. HALE presented a petition from inhabitants of Delaware and Pennsylvania, asking for a peaceable dissolution of the Union. This proposition, coming as it did from the wrong side of the Union, produced a debate of some length and much acrimony. Mr. DAVIS, of Massachusetts, deserved and received the thanks of Mr. FOOTE for his manly opposition to this attack on the integrity of the Palladium of our Liberties and our Slavery. This champion of the Union suggested that expulsion would not be an excessive penalty for such disorganizing acts, though he declined making the proposition, himself. Mr. SEWARD proposed the reference of the petition to the Judiciary Committee, with instructions to report that the prayer was one Congress had no power to grant, characterizing it as the proposition of madmen. It is somewhat strange, perhaps, that an ebullition of lunacy should have created so strong a sensation in that grave and reverend body. After occupying the chief of two days and affording food for the indignation and the mirth of Honorable Senators, its reception was finally refused by a vote of fifty, to three, the dissentients being Messrs. CHASE, HALE, and SEWARD. Mr. STEVENS, of Pennsylvania, Mr. GIDDINGS, of Ohio, Mr. KING, of New York, and other members of the House bore strong and eloquent testimonies against every shape which the Adversary assumed at this time. In fact, nothing could be proposed in House or Senate that did not bring up the formidable apparition which must haunt all public assemblies and all private walks until it is finally exorcised and annihilated. After Mr. WINTHROP had been removed to the Senate he moved the question of the treatment of our colored seaman in southern ports, and maintained the right with much perseverance and ability. That atrocity was perhaps never so fully brought before the public or more thoroughly sifted and exposed. It is needless to say that his efforts had no further effect than the arousing of public attention and the information of the general mind.

This black and evil work having been accomplished, the victory was duly celebrated at the Metropolitan Pandemonium by feastings, illuminations, and bonfires. Mr. WEBSTER bounded from the dinner-table to the balcony, when called out by his admiring friends, and aptly quoted the soliloquy of the most odious tyrant in English history, when

congratulating himself on the success of his treasonable and bloody schemes. "The winter of his discontent was made glorious summer by the triumphs of Slavery, and the heart of the Defender of the Constitution, full of joy and wine, overflowed at the prospect of the peace which was to crown this prosperous wickedness. We think, however, that even in this winter, which the fervent imagination of Mr. WEBSTER Saw converted into a fatal summer, we can see the signs of a true spring, of a blessed harvest. All these results we have foreseen and foretold from the beginning. We see in them the fruits of our own agitation. The Abolitionists have done, Mr. CLAY and Mr. WEBSTER being witnesses, what no other body of men have ever been able to do since there was a Congress. They made it a valuable and useful body! They turned that logocracy into a Grand National Anti-Slavery Debating Society. For the Slaveholders know, and tell us, that to defend Slavery is an Anti-Slavery work. Silence and darkness are the only elements fit to support its like. Light and Speech are the most powerful exorcisms that can be brought to bear against it. For the first time since Congress was, its members have earned their per diem. No sensible person grudges them their daily allowance, or would were it twice as much. The Abolitionists have beaten their "rub-a-dub," as Mr. WEBSTER calls it, to some purpose. They have played the Devil's tattoo for Mr. CLAY, and the Rogue's March which has drummed Mr. WEBSTER out of the Legislative Camp. Lord Chesterfield said of Pulteney, that "he sunk into insignificance and a Peerage;" so, thanks to the Abolitionists, Mr. WEBSTER has sneaked from the Senate Chamber to the Department of State.

The Abolitionists have sometimes been accused of boasting themselves unduly, and magnifying their office beyond measure. But these charges can hardly again be urged against them. Mr. WEBSTER and Mr. CLAY, to say nothing of the "Patricii minorum gentium," have set that matter forever at rest, and put it beyond the possibility of a peradventure. It is the Abolitionists, and they only, that have created the prejudices at the North, from which all the mischief springs. It is their incessant agitation that has stirred up the ill will which looks at the relation of master and Slave from the stand-point of the Slave. This is all true, and very creditable to the observation and the candor of those most honorable gentlemen. But there is a curious appendix to this information, less creditable to their sagacity; and that is, that they profess to believe that the passage of the Compromise Bills would quiet these perturbed spirits, and restore the good old days of pro-slavery

tranquillity that reigned twenty years ago! Mr. CLAY really seems to think that the deglutition of his panacea of the many simples would work a miraculous cure in the body politic, and restore it, if not to health, to that blessed ignorance in which it formerly rejoiced that anything ailed it. He referred to the calm which followed the Missouri Compromise, and anticipates a renewal of those halcyon days. But he forgets that the very element of which he and his compeer complains did not exist then, and does exist now. An organized Movement, resting on the absolute, essential, and incurable wickedness of Slavery appealing to the religious and humane elements of human nature, has made a radical difference in the permanence and growing intensity of the Anti-Slavery Agitation. Mr. CLAY and Mr. WEBSTER may be sure this will not be put out by filling its odorous lamp with the very oil that feeds its light. The proposition is so absurd that it hardly seems serious. It would seem to smack of senility were not their speeches so full of strong hard-headed wickedness. Were it Agitation only that we cared for, we should have regretted the rejection of the Compromise. But we do not wish evil to be done that good may come of it. And, be it as it may, we can assure those afflicted patriots that they may as well curse God and die at once, if they expect to see the beatific day when there shall be no more Anti-Slavery Agitation in the land. There must be no more Slavery first.

THE SOUTH AND THE UNION.

The policy of the South, in its leading influences, has been, during the past year, marked by the same state craft and distinguished by the same success that has ever characterized it. The indignation which naturally pervaded it when it found that the conquests of the Mexican War, which had been planned and fought through for the simple purpose of strengthening its influence in the nation, by extending the dominion of its idea, were not all of them necessarily to be devoted to their legitimate purpose, was loud and deep. Its rage at the certain loss of the golden regions of California-regions so eminently adapted to Slave labor, wrested from it by the northern immigration, that had peopled it with freemen, and at the doubt, not yet entirely relieved, which was spread over the destiny of New Mexico and Utah, by the fanaticism of northern freedom, was as sincere as it was violent. It found vent in the resolutions of legislatures, the messages of governors,

the vaporing of conventions, the rhetoric of the stump and of the pulpit, and the fierce diatribes of the press. In Georgia, a Joint Report and Resolutions were submitted early in the year, recapitulating the injuries the South had endured at the hands of the North, and authorizing the Governor, in case Congress should abolish Slavery in any Territory, or the District, or admit California, or the other Territories, with Constitutions forbidding Slavery, or if any Slave should be refused to be delivered up by the authorities of any northern State, to call a Convention of the People, to take such steps as the general good should seem to make necessary. As at least one of these cases has arisen, and Georgia has not yet seceded, we may hope that she has reconsidered her stern purpose, and relented in our favor. South Carolina, too, has not been wanting in that noisy bravado which has constituted, for so many years, the political capital of that bullying Commonwealth. A bill was introduced into the Legislature making postmasters liable to fine and imprisonment, if they knowingly deliver to any person "any written or printed paper, picture, drawing, or engraving," reflecting on the Domestic Institution. A resolution was also passed, approving of the conduct of the South Carolina members, in refusing to vote for any Speaker "in the slightest degree tainted with unsoundness on the Slavery question ;" and also heartily approving of their bold, decided, and truly Southern position, and their emphatic declaration of the determination of their people, "that if Slavery was abolished in the District, or the Wilmot Proviso adopted, the Union would be dissolved." Alabama, also, took her determined stand by the side of Georgia and Carolina. Alas, we fear that these valorous resolutions would have stood the test as indifferently as their answering antagonisms of Massachusetts, when it came to be relentlessly applied!

Maryland, by a unanimous vote of her Legislature, passed resolutions, in answer to those of Vermont, refusing to entertain them, and directing the Governor to return them whence they came. The Governor of Virginia, moved by the refusal of Ohio to deliver up a free negro charged with the crime, as we gather, of assisting in the escape of a Slave, such an act being no crime in Ohio, sent an angry message to the Legislature, containing the following spirited passage:

"This sort of thing is of frequent occurrence, and must be remedied. If the Federal Government fails to furnish adequate protection to us touching our Slaves, and offenders against the laws concerning them, then we must take the remedy into our own hands; for our citizens are entitled to ample protection in all their rights, whether of person or