FREEDOM IN NEW MEXICO.

JULY 26, 1850.

Mr. SEWARD Submitted an amendment authorizing the President to issue a proclamation declaring that New Mexico should be admitted as a state on the presentation of her constitution heretofore adopted, and also authorizing New Mexico to appoint three commissioners, to be associated with the commissioners to be appointed by the United States and by Texas, in settling the boundary question between Texas and New Mexico

THE object of this amendment is to bring before the Senate. an important question-the admission of New Mexico as one of the states of this Union, upon an equal footing with the original states, under the constitution which her convention has adopted.

I have heard here much of nationality-of national principles, sympathies, and feelings. Such principles, sympathies, and feelings, meet my highest respect and admiration; but I differ very much from many who bestow that commendation, in regard to what principles, sympathies, and feelings, deserve the character of nationality. So far as I have heard here, it has generally been bestowed upon those movements which left out of view everything of paramount and ultimate importance, in regard to the perfection and permanence of the institutions of the country, and which were distinguished on the other hand by a disposition to concede and compromise for the present hour and for temporary purposes. I have no part in such principles, sympathies, or feelings. I believe that concession to-day only increases the evils and embarrassments of to-morrow. I will show how the question of boundary between New Mexico and Texas-that great question upon which the peace and harmony of the country are supposed to depend-may be, not postponed, but definitely and justly settled. That is the object of my proposition.

It will be said that the proposition is premature, because the Senate has no official information that a constitution has been sanctioned by the people of New Mexico. It is true that we have not that information, and therefore there seems to be a propriety in delaying the proposition.

Nevertheless, I find myself obliged to bring in the proposition, for the reason that an emergency, which I cannot control, brings the question up now, and requires the admission of New Mexico at the hazard of her admission being forever lost.

The amendment of the senator from Maine [Mr. BRADBURY] provides for a disposition of the boundary dispute, which would absolutely prevent the Senate from considering the constitution of New Mexico and her demand for admission, when they should be presented here, with official authority, and with accustomed formality. It is not my fault that the question is thus sprung upon the Senate now. If the Senate will strike out from this bill all that relates to the boundary of Texas and to the territory of New Mexico, then the question of admitting New Mexico may be postponed until she shall present her constitution, which, however, is already unofficially on our tables.

But the Senate will do no such thing. It is apparent enough that the amendment of the senator from Maine [Mr. BRADBURY] is to be adopted, and that amendment absolutely postpones the question of the admission of New Mexico until after the report of the commissioners shall have been confirmed by Texas and the United States. When that action shall have taken place, there will probably be no New Mexico to be admitted; certainly none worth admitting, or fit to be admitted. The delay, thus designed, is inconsistent with the interests and with the rights of the people of New Mexico. The senator from New Hampshire [Mr. HALE] has truly described those rights. They are indeed a conquered— a subjugated people. But they are, nevertheless, a people-a people constituting a community-and, as such, socially and politically enjoying rights as definite, as important, as the rights of the people of any territory, or even of any state within the United States. They have undergone a change of sovereignty only, but in all other respects their position and their rights are unchanged. When they lost the rights secured to them by the constitution of Mexico, they acquired the rights of American citizens secured to them by the constitution of the United States. Those rights in

volve the protection of their property, of their lives, of their liberty, and of their territory. All these are rights of which the United States can lawfully deprive no community on earth. They may extend their conquering arm over states and territories and provinces, but it carries with it freedom and security to the people inhabiting the subjugated countries. Such are the rights of the people of New Mexico, secured to them by the law of nations, which follows immediately upon any conquest. But these rights, moreover, are expressly secured by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States acquired New Mexico as a territory or province belonging to the empire of Mexico, and they stipulated by the treaty with Mexico, and of course with the people of the province of New Mexico, that they should be protected in all their rights before described, and should be admitted to the privileges of citizens of the United States, and should have government established over them.

Sir, the proposition which I submit is to fulfil that treaty in its letter and spirit-nothing more; and the time has come to insist upon nothing less. It is to incorporate New Mexico as a state. This provision stands opposed to the provision in the bill for incorporating only a part of New Mexico, as a dependent territory of the United States, assigning the rest to the state of Texas. I pray you to consider these two propositions upon their merits, respectively, and consider them well. In the first place, mine is most in harmony and most congenial with the treaty-with a fair and just construction of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. What is the language of that treaty? It is not that the province of New Mexico shall be admitted into the United States as a territory, or as a part of the state of Texas or of any other existing state in the Union; but it is that it shall be admitted as a state. The treaty contains no provision whatever for bringing that territory into provincial or territorial degradation. It is fair and just, therefore, to say that the treaty would be broken by denying to the people of New Mexico the rights and the position of a state. It is only fair to presume, that if the United States had contemplated that New Mexico was to be held in territorial vassalage indefinitely, they would so have expressed themselves in the treaty. I know that the right to judge of the time when New Mexico should be admitted as a state was reserved to Congress. But that is all that is reserved, the right to determine the time when. The

reservation keeps that province exactly in the condition in which we now find it, until Congress shall adopt the proposition to admit New Mexico as a state.

In the next place, my proposition is most compatible and harmonious with the constitution of the United States. It is a remarkable feature of that constitution, that its framers never contemplated colonies, or provinces, or territories, at all. On the other hand, they contemplated states only; nothing less than states; perfect states; equal states; as they are called here, sovereign states.

There was indeed a domain belonging to the United States at the time the constitution was adopted, which, for want only of population, was set off temporarily as a territory-the northwestern territory. But that was only a temporary arrangement. The arrangement itself provided for the subdivision of the territory, and its organization into five new states, the moment that it should be peopled. There is reason-there is sound political wisdom, in this provision of the constitution excluding colonies, which are always subject to oppression, and excluding provinces, which always tend to corrupt and enfeeble and ultimately to break down the parent state.

It appears, then, that the proposition which I have submitted is entirely congenial with the treaty and with the constitution of the United States. On the other hand, the proposition to extend a territorial form of government over this people, or to assign them in whole or in part to Texas, is in violation of both. New Mexico is entitled to be admitted into the Union immediately, because her interests now require it; and because the stipulation in the treaty, reserving to Congress the right to decide upon the time when, is to be regarded as reserving, not the exercise of discretion to oppress the people of New Mexico, but a discretion to be exercised for the benefit and welfare of that people-a discretion for their good, not for their oppression and ruin. What, then, is the time when New Mexico ought to be admitted? tion. That time must have come, whenever it shall have happened that immediate admission has become necessary to save the liberties of her people, and the integrity of her territory. That is the time, precisely. And it has now come, for both are in danger. The liberties of New Mexico are in danger of being subverted, by her being merged into the state of Texas. Even

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her political existence is threatened to be destroyed by the state of Texas, with an armed force. What answer will you give me on this point? None is made, except that New Mexico is not in a condition to be admitted. New Mexico fulfils all the conditions which you have ever required on the admission of a state into the Union. There is only one condition which the Constitution recognizes; and that is, that she shall present a republican form of government. New Mexico fulfils that condition. You have all seen and read her Constitution, although it has not yet been officially promulgated. You have heretofore established precedents, by which you have required a population of a given number to constitute a state, and that number is the one which constitutes the basis of the selection of one member of Congress. New Mexico more than fulfils that condition. She has a population of over one hundred thousand souls. She has a population double that of Florida, when she was admitted as a state. She has a population within two-thirds as large as Texas, which has two members of Congress. Sixty thousand inhabitants were deemed enough to entitle the state of Ohio to admission. The same number was required of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. And New Mexico exceeds it by more than two-thirds.

But we are told that the people of New Mexico are unfit for self-government. Sir, this objection comes too late. No one, maintaining the capacity of man for self-government, and admitting the validity of the treaty, can assert that any one hundred thousand people, citizens of the United States, recognized as such by its constitution and laws, are incapable of the functions of selfgovernment. I know it is said that you will govern them better than they can govern themselves. What is the guaranty you are offering, for governing them better than they can govern themselves? It is contained in this bill, to dismember their territory and subvert their constitution, which secures equal and impartial freedom. They can assuredly do better for themselves than that. They are a mingled population-marked by characteristics which resulted from the extraordinary system of colonization and government maintained by Old Spain in her provinces-a policy entirely different from our own. The colonization of Spanish America proceeded altogether from an insatiable thirst for gold, and for nothing else. The government of Spain over her colonies was an