time in reference to the territories of New Mexico and Utah—­for I may assume that those are the legislative measures referred to—­if anything more is meant than that a certain measure was adopted, and enacted in reference to those territories, I take issue on that point.  I do not know that it could be proved that, even in reference to those territories, a principle was enacted at all.  A certain measure, or, if you please, a course of measures, was enacted in reference to the Territories of New Mexico and Utah; but I do not know that you can call this enacting a principle.  It is certainly not enacting a principle which is to carry with it a rule for other Territories lying in other parts of the country, and in a different legal position.  As to the principle of non-intervention on the part of Congress in the question of slavery, I do not find that, either as principle or as measure, it was enacted in those territorial bills of 1850.  I do not, unless I have greatly misread them, find that there is anything at all which comes up to that.  Every legislative act of those territorial governments must come before Congress for allowance or disallowance, and under those bills without repealing them, without departing from them in the slightest degree, it would be competent for Congress to-morrow to pass any law on that subject.

How then can it be said that the principle of non-intervention on the part of Congress in the subject of slavery was enacted and established by the compromise measures of 1850?  But, whether that be so or not, how can you find, in a simple measure applying in terms to these individual Territories, and to them alone, a rule which is to govern all other Territories with a retrospective and with a prospective action?  Is it not a mere begging of the question to say that those compromise measures, adopted in this specific case, amount to such a general rule?

But, let us try it in a parallel case.  In the earlier land legislation of the United States, it was customary, without exception, when a Territory became a State, to require that there should be a stipulation in their State constitution that the public lands sold within their borders should be exempted from taxation for five years after the sale.  This, I believe, continued to be the uniform practice down to the year 1820, when the State of Missouri was admitted.  She was admitted under the stipulation.  If I mistake not, the next State which was admitted into the Union—­but it is not important whether it was the next or not—­came in without that stipulation, and they were left free to tax the public lands the moment when they were sold.  Here was a principle; as much a principle as it is contended was established in the Utah and New Mexico territorial bill; but did any one suppose that it acted upon the other Territories?  I believe the whole system is now abolished under the operation of general laws, and the influence of that example may have led to the change.  But, until it was made by legislation, the mere fact that public lands sold in Arkansas were immediately subject to taxation, could not alter the law in regard to the public lands sold in Missouri, or in any other to where they were they were exempt.