The Texas Republican

GEN. HOUSTON ON OREGON VOTE.

General Houston, in his recent letter to Gen. Gadsden, bases the defense of his Oregon vote on the following propositions:

1. That "Oregon, owing to her isolated position, and the protracted remissness and neglect of the Government of the United States, continued through a series of years, touching her agencies and wants, had formed a provisional government for her own protection and internal regulation, whereby slavery was excluded from the territory."

2. He contends that, in that vote, he was but carrying out the Missouri compromise to which all the states of the confederacy had subscribed, and particularly Texas, who came into the Union under an expression of its provisions. He says: "The rights of Oregon to admission as free territory, originated, matured, and were guaranteed to her by force and virtue of the Missouri compromise."

In relation to the first proposition, although he tells us that the right of Oregon to exclude slavery from that territory, under the circumstances cannot be questioned, we must disagree with Gen. H. To admit that Oregon had the right to do so, would be to admit that a territory can prohibit the citizens of the states from the privileges guaranteed by the federal compact. The territories are the property of the states. So long as they remain territories they are open to the emigration of the citizens of all the states, with or without their property, as they may choose. The slaveholder has as good a right to take his black slaves to the mines, as a free soiler to take his white hired menial servants to them; and, to say that a territory shall have the power to deprive either the one or the other of that right, is a strange doctrine in politics, and particularly strange for a southern statesman.

In relation to the second proposition, in which Gen. Houston places the justification of his Oregon vote on the Missouri compromise, we must charge him with a want of candor. The Missouri compromise, as he well knows, was confined alone to the Louisiana purchase. It was never extended to Oregon. So these two propositions fall to the ground.

Gen. H. seems to rely much upon the fact, that Texas came into the Union by an extension of the Missouri compromise. Although this is irrelevant to the question at issue, it is worthy of notice, perhaps, on account of the deductions which he draws from it. Texas came into the Union with the consent of every southern state of the confederacy to the conditions which were imposed upon her. The proviso in the Oregon bill was incorporated in it, and passed, against the declared opposition of every southern state. Hence the comparison fails. It remains with Texas as yet to say whether any portion of her territory shall be given up to free-soil. It is only in the event of a division of the State that such would be the case. But even if she should determine to do so, the sacrifice would not be near so great as Gen. Houston would have us believe. It would not, according to the evidences before us, extend to more than one-fifteenth part of her territories.

The friends of the Oregon bill, (Gen. Houston alone excepted,) base their reasons for the introduction and passage of it upon different grounds from Gen. H. Thomas H. Benton says it was introduced to assert the unlimited power of Congress over the territories. Throughout all portions of the Union it was regarded as a free soil triumph.

We acknowledge the distinction that Gen. Houston draws between the Oregon bill and the Wilmot proviso, inasmuch as the latter by its very terms, applied to territory hereafter to be acquired by treaty, or otherwise and not to that already held by the United States. But we regard it as a distinction without a difference. It is in effect the Wilmot proviso extended to the Oregon territory. Does the transfer change the name or the principle? Not of the principle, as it assumes the same power in the one case as in the other. If a change, it is only in name, and probably it ought to be Houston, Benton proviso.

Thus much for Gen. Houston's logic. Now for his declaration of faith. He says: "I assert the principle that Congress has no power to legislate upon the subject of slavery in the states or territories of the Union." His professions and his practices are strangely at variance.

We conclude, that Gen. Houston voted for the Wilmot proviso on the Oregon territorial bill-that said vote was equivalent to a declaration that Congress has the right to legislate on the subject of slavery in the territories-that the reasons he adduces do not exist in fact-that of those reasons did exist, the rule of faith which he lays down would exclude him from a claim to consistency.

More than all this, Gen. Houston not only violated his rule of faith, but gave his casting vote as a southern, Texas senator for the free soil doctrine, in defiance of the instructions of the Legislature, and against the interests of his constituents.

We have said thus much not from any personal considerations, but from a sense of duty. Gen. Houston may charge the opposers of his Oregon vote with a want of candor, but, in our opinion, he will have to adduce other and better reasons to sustain this sweeping allegation.

We have been asked by one or two of our friends, why we did not publish the whole of the correspondence between Generals Houston and Gadsden. Our reason for not doing so, was, that we have not been in the habit of publishing personal abuse. It has been our aim to keep the question of southern rights steadily in view, and not to permit ourselves to be drawn off on false issues. We have been called "by some uncandid persons," a Calhoun man: yet we published only that portion of his letter, in reply to Thomas H. Benton, which related to the questions at issue between the north and south.

We publish this week a portion of Mr. Wigfall's speech. The correspondence which elicited it to publication is deferred.