The Daily Union

The Faith of Compacts.

If a compromise is a 'compact,' as the abolitionists, free-soilers, &c., have recently discovered in regard to the Compromise of 1820, then look here and see (says the Journal of Commerce) how religiously the North keep such compacts! In every instance, if the most noisy fulminators against the Nebraska bill could have had their way, that portion of the 'compact' of 1850 which provides for the surrender of fugitive slaves would have been kept in the same manner as at Milwaukee. The fugitive-slave law being in fact but a practical enforcement of a stipulation of the constitution—a stipulation deemed so important by the South at the date of that instrument, that it is historically known that without it the Union could not have been formed—has all the force of a solemn compact; a force which it does not derive chiefly from the Compromise of 1850, but from the constitution. The Missouri Compromise, equally with that of 1850, and in the most positive terms, provides for the surrender of fugitive slaves. Now, if these extra sticklers for the Missouri Compromise trample so audaciously and so exultingly upon a stipulation which is common to both compromises and to the constitution itself, how evident it is that their pretended horror at the alleged violation of 'the faith of compacts' is only a horror that their particular hobby is dismounted.