But it is said we cannot restore it; that though we elect every member of the lower House, the Senate is still against us.  It is quite true that of the senators who passed the Nebraska Bill a majority of the whole Senate will retain their seats in spite of the elections of this and the next year.  But if at these elections their several constituencies shall clearly express their will against Nebraska, will these senators disregard their will?  Will they neither obey nor make room for those who will?

But even if we fail to technically restore the compromise, it is still a great point to carry a popular vote in favor of the restoration.  The moral weight of such a vote cannot be estimated too highly.  The authors of Nebraska are not at all satisfied with the destruction of the compromise—­an indorsement of this principle they proclaim to be the great object.  With them, Nebraska alone is a small matter—­to establish a principle for future use is what they particularly desire.

The future use is to be the planting of slavery wherever in the wide world local and unorganized opposition cannot prevent it.  Now, if you wish to give them this indorsement, if you wish to establish this principle, do so.  I shall regret it, but it is your right.  On the contrary, if you are opposed to the principle,—­intend to give it no such indorsement, let no wheedling, no sophistry, divert you from throwing a direct vote against it.

Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they be thrown in company with the abolitionists.  Will they allow me, as an old Whig, to tell them, good-humoredly, that I think this is very silly?  Stand with anybody that stands right.  Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.  Stand with the abolitionist in restoring the Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the Fugitive Slave law.  In the latter case you stand with the Southern disunionist.  What of that?  You are still right.  In both cases you are right.  In both cases you oppose the dangerous extremes.  In both you stand on middle ground, and hold the ship level and steady.  In both you are national, and nothing less than national.  This is the good old Whig ground.  To desert such ground because of any company is to be less than a Whig—­less than a man—­less than an American.

I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic.  I object to it because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another.  I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people—­a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that liberty, as a principle, we have ceased to revere.  I object to it because the fathers of the republic eschewed and rejected it.  The argument of “necessity” was the only argument they ever admitted in favor of slavery; and so far, and so far only, as it carried them did they ever go.  They found the institution existing among us, which they could not help, and they cast blame upon the British king for having permitted its introduction.