greatest, and prohibited the employment, in the territory, of labor and capital, in the establishment and working of manufactories, as an inducement to slave-holders to settle there, that they might elect a monarch who would establish slavery, and thus increase the power in the league of the slave-holding monarchies?

The general government of the United States acquired and holds. these territories in trust for the sovereign citizens of the several states. The object of the Wilmot Provisoists is to induce Congress, the trustee, to prohibit the transfer of property in slaves, and the removal of their persons to the territories-to forbid the employment there of most of the moveable property of slave-holders; while the right of the inhabitants of the non-slave-holding states is treated as unquestionable to remove to, and use in, the territories all of their own moveable property.

The consequences of the accomplishment of this object would be the exclusion from the territories of most of the persons who are slaveholders and would otherwise establish themselves there, and the settlement of nearly the whole country by immigrants from the non-slaveholding states. The combined operation of these causes would secure the conversion of the territories into non-slave-holding states, and the soil and most of all the advantages of the new acquisitions, mainly for the inhabitants of the existing states of this description. What would be thought, by all the disinterested and impartial of our race, of an individual trustee of a large real estate, abounding in rich gold "washings," who, years before the time when it would be his duty, in the execution of the trust to divide and sell the estate in many different parcels, permitted some of the beneficiaries to work the gold "washings" with all the means and laborers they could transfer and employ in them, and thus increase their ability to purchase and monopolize the estate at the sale to be made by the trustee, while he prohibited the others from using more than half their wealth in the employment of labor in the same kind of work?

If the treaty had provided that the former Mexican laws should continue in force, it would require the exercise of the proper legislative power to terminate the authority of all, except such as are political, by repealing them. But an express agreement in the treaty, for the continuance of the obligation of the political laws of Mexico in the territories, would be void, as the treaty-making power is incompetent to give authority to laws which would be inconsistent with the constitution. If a Mexican law prohibited slavery in the territories while they belonged to Mexico, a stipulation in the treaty for its continuance, could not preserve its authority in the ceded country after it became a territory of the United States. The effect of the cession would be to annul the law, upon the ground of its repugnance to the constitution of the United States. But the acquisition of these territories, does not present the case of a country conquered and relinquished, or ceded, to the United States, with laws. the obligation of which the treaty secured.

The feeble Mexican government, which existed once over a small part of the territories, had been subverted, and, upon its ruins, a military government established, by the authority of the President of the United States, in his character of Commander-in-chief of the American army,

before the treaty was made. The military government existed at the time of the ratification of the treaty, by the governments of the United States and Mexico. The legal effect of the cession, was to terminate the military government, and the conquered and ceded territories were left without a government or civil laws. If there were a government de facto in the territories, it would derive its authority from the implied assent of the inhabitants to the power it exercised, and a majority of them consists now of American citizens. Some of these were there at the conquest, and at the date of the cession, and the others have migrated there since. The Mexican government and laws had been overthrown, before nine-tenths of them established themselves in the country; and they have done no act since, from which their assent can be implied to the re-establishment of any of the laws of the old local, civil government. There is, indeed, no lawful civil authority in the territories, and there can be none, till after the establishment, by the inhabitants of the ceded country, or by Congress, of a government, or the establishment of a state in the territories and the admission of it into the Union. The condition of things which exists there, is the same that it would be if the territories had been without Mexican inhabitants and occupied solely by savages, not subject to Mexican laws, but having a right to occupy the soil, while the fee in it, and the dominion over the country, belonged to the Republic of Mexico, and the United States had taken forcible possession of the territories first, and obtained a cession of them afterward. In the case we have supposed, there would be no Mexican laws in force, in the territories, at the date of the cession, as the jurisdiction of the Mexican Republic had not been extended and established over the waste territories. There is no difference between the principle that would apply to a case in which a Mexican government and laws had not existed before the cession, and the case that has occurred, in which all these had been subverted before the treaty was made that contains no provision for the re-establishment of any of them. Mexican grants of wild lands, would entitle the grantees, in either case, to the estates conveyed, which the United States would be bound, by the treaty, and the laws of nations, to recognize and protect.

Any inhabitant of the territories, whether an American or Mexican, who was there when the treaty was made, or has gone and established himself there since, occupies a territory of the United States, but over which no civil government or civil laws exist. A Mexican inhabitant, who owned property there before the cession, has a good title to it still, unless it has been impaired, or transferred, by some act of his own. Any American, or other person, who is there with a right to property, which was property in the state of the Union from which he migrated, is entitled to hold and enjoy it as property, in the territories. As there was no law of the territories which prohibited the removal of his property of any kind, and none of the United States, he had as clear a right to take and use it, as he had to go himself and reside in the territories.

Every owner of property is entitled to an equal measure of protection for it, from the military power of the United States, which may be employed there, and, if Congress should establish a territorial government, it would be the duty of the government to protect equally, with

impartiality and fidelity, property of every kind within its territorial limits and belonging to the inhabitants of the country.

As the Mexican inhabitants were left, by the cession and conquest of foreigners, as will be shown hereafter, in territories without local laws, and many Americans resided there when these events occurred, some of whom held slaves, and other slaves have been moved there since, and are held in bondage, the masters can establish as perfect a right to the property they claim in their slaves, by producing and proving the existence of the laws of the state, in which they acquired the property, as any Mexican inhabitant can to the property he possesses, by tracing his title to the laws of Mexico as the source of it. No American resident has a right to require the claim to moveable property, of a Mexican inhabitant, to be decided according to the laws of the state on which the American relies to maintain, his own title to personal property. The same principle rejects the pretension of Mexican inhabitants to have the question of the title to such property, set up by an American resident, determined according to the extinct laws of the subverted local government, or of the Republic of Mexico. If a territorial government should be established by the inhabitants, or by Congress, there is no power in either to authorize the government to make a distinction between property of different kinds, within the territorial limits of the government, and to afford protection to one kind and withhold it from another, or to prescribe any.

The eighth article of the treaty, by which the territories were ceded, secures the right to the Mexican inhabitants to continue their residence there, and allows them the alternative of retaining there their character and rights of Mexican citizens, or of becoming citizens of the United States, according to their election, to be made within a year from the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty. The effect of a failure on their part to make an actual election within the year to retain their character of foreigners and of Mexican citizens, and the continuance of their residence in the territories after the expiration of that period, the same article declares shall be a constructive election, the effect of which would make them at the end of the year citizens of the United States. It is not probable there have been many, if any, actual elections under the authority of the treaty, and there could be none by construction before the 30th of May, 1849, the end of one year after the exchange of the ratifications. Every Mexican inhabitant could, if he elected to do so, acquire the right, under the treaty, to remain during his life, in the territories, as a foreigner and a Mexican citizen. The territories were ceded to the United States, with no people, unconditionally, and, as the effect of the treaty alone, incorporated with the people of the United States. The savages, who occupied the territories, were their own rulers, and not subjects of Mexico, and neither party to the treaty intended they should ever become citizens of the United States. Territory, merely, was transferred, without any Mexican inhabitants made absolutely, by the treaty, a part of the people of the United States, and, therefore, entitled, after the cession, to the benefit of all the laws that were not political in their character, by which they had been governed in the territory before the treaty. No laws of a sovereign, who cedes territories, can be impressed upon territory alone and made inseparable from

it. If a territory be transferred without people incorporated by the treaty with the people who receive the cession, the authority of the laws of the former sovereign, in the territories, ceases with his dominion.

The Mexican inhabitants have the right reserved to them by the treaty, which, for any thing we can foresee, they may exercise, to leave the territories, and reside in some part of the Republic of Mexico, or to continue their residence in California and New Mexico, as foreigners and Mexican citizens. Should they become citizens of the United States, it will be the effect of a process of naturalization, after a residence, from necessity, for some time in the territories, after they became territories of the United States. They were foreigners before the cession, and their right to remain in the territories as foreigners was recognized by the treaty, which prescribed a mode in which they might afterward be naturalized and become citizens of the United States, as acts of Congress do for the benefit of all other foreigners, who establish themselves in the United States and apply for the rights of citizenship. The Mexican inhabitants have the privilege, in common with all other foreigners, of seeking and obtaining naturalization; but neither they or any other foreigners have, or can acquire, the right to subject to the laws of the native country of any of them the citizens of the Union in states, or in any territory of the United States.

The eleventh article of the treaty contains a statement of a fact made, and therefore affirmed to be true, by the governments of the United States and of Mexico, that a great part of the territories that were ceded, was occupied by savage tribes of Indians. They were not subject to Mexico, or to any local authority established by that Republic. From other sources of information we have learned, that all but small parts, comparatively, of the territories were occupied exclusively by the tribes. referred to in the treaty. They had preserved their independence. They had chiefs and councils and usages, or laws, of their own. They acknowledged no allegiance to Mexico, and rendered no obedience to her. laws; but were almost constantly engaged in wars against her. The Mexican inhabitants were indebted, for their occupancy of the soil, in many of their settlements, to the sufferance of some of these tribes, which had the power to terminate the privilege whenever they chose— and they frequently extinguished it suddenly, and took compensation for the temporary possession of the soil, in the plunder of the property, and the massacre of the people.

These tribes had, by their power and cruelty, excited such terror in Mexico, that the United States were required, by that Republic, to create, by the treaty an obligation upon the General Government to prevent the tribes, forcibly, if necessary, from making any incursions into any territory, which continued, after the treaty, to be a part of Mexico, and to punish and exact satisfaction for them from the Indians, if they should elude the vigilance and power of the United States, and make any such incursions.

These Indians, in the undisturbed possession of nearly all the territories, held slaves, as the parties to the treaty admit, in the 11th article of it, and would sell and transfer them to others; and, according to one of the most recent authorities, Indian men and women are held in legal servitude by the Californians, who are the descendants of the Spanish

conquerors, and form the best part of the whole population of California.

The usage, or law, of the Indians on the subject, which prevailed over nearly all the territories, authorized slavery. At the time, and before the local government of the territories was overthrown by the employment of the military power of the United States, this Indian usage, or law, as well as the authority in relation to property of the same kind under which the Californians acted, prevailed. Property in slaves, held by the Indian inhabitants of the territories, and, probably, by white persons and Mexicans residing among the tribes at the time of the cession, is recognized by the United States in the eleventh article of the treaty.

One object of the article was to prohibit, in future, any purchase, by any inhabitant of the United States, of any Mexican or foreigner residing in Mexico, who had been captured by Indians inhabiting the territory of either of the two republics. This prohibition relates to all the persons who had been previously captured, and, consequently, to the persons who had been captured before the session by the Indians of California and New Mexico. Another, and the next part of the same article, binds the United States to exercise the influence and power of the General Government, faithfully, to rescue and return to their country, or deliver them to the representatives of the Mexican Government, all persons captured within Mexican territory and carried into the territory of the United States after the cesssion, as we understand the meaning and effect of the treaty to be. No part of the treaty requires the government of the United States to extinguish the claim of the Indians to property in their captives, or to prevent them from selling their captives to any other person than an inhabitant of the United States. The prohibition in the treaty extends no further than to make it unlawful for any inhabitant of the United States to purchase or acquire any such captives. In the limitation of the prohibition is a recognition, by the governments of the two Republics, of the property of Indians, or of those who claimed, under them, in such captives, and of the right of those who were the owners at the time of the cession, to sell their slaves to any other person than an inhabitant of the United States.

ART. IX-HOW SHALL COTTON MAINTAIN REMUNERATING PRICES?

Various propositions have been advanced in reply to the above query. Some have proposed a "Cotton Planter's Convention," to reduce the amount of production. Some have attacked the doctrine of protective duties as destructive to the planters, like Mr. McDuffie, in his " forty bale theory," and advocated "free trade," as the natural parent of "high prices." The truth is, the question is difficult of solution; and no wonder such various opinions are ventured, even among the most intelligent. We are willing to let the planters speak for themselves, and give publication, with pleasure, to the following communication from one of them. If the plan advocated be objectionable, or impracticable, it may suggest to some one a better one, and, at all events, it seems to us far less impracticable and objectionable, than the Cotton Planters' Convention, which takes for granted, that the supply of the staple is above the world's wants. The world has yet millions to be clothed, if we will but trade with them upon fair terms. Give us new markets, and extended commerce, and the demand for cotton will be equal to, if it does not exceed, the supply, which experience begins now to show is limited.-ED.