415]                          The Convention.                             37

vention. The most important committee was considered
to be that on representation. Other committees to which
great importance was attached were those on the legis-
lative department; the committee on the judiciary, and the
committee on future amendments. The president of the
convention in appointing the various committees had
strict regard to the different sections of the State.

Early in its session the convention had appointed a se-
lect committee to draw up resolutions in reference to the
recent compromise measures adopted by the United States
Congress. On the 10th of December, 1850, the select
committee reported a series of resolutions, which were
unanimously adopted.

These resolutions declared that the constitution of the
United States had accomplished all the objects—civil and
political—which its most sanguine framers and friends an-
ticipated. That a proper appreciation of the blessings
which that instrument had brought to the country would
lead every state in the Union to adopt all measures nec-
essary to give complete effect to all provisions of the
constitution, or laws of Congress intended for the protec-
tion of any portion of the Union.

They declared that the several acts of Congress, namely:
those relating to the admission of California as a free
state; to the territorial governments of Utah and New
Mexico; to the prohibition of slave trade in the District
of Columbia, and to the reclamation of fugitives from
labor, did not, to the extent they desired, meet the just
demands of the South. But in order to heal the public agi-
tation and perpetuate the Union, the acts of compromise
received their acquiescence. They declared that of the
series of laws passed by Congress that intended to insure
the restoration of fugitives from labor was the only one
professing to protect the peculiar rights and institution of
the Southern states from the " mischievous hostility of a
wicked fanaticism " in the North. The fugitive slave law
was but a " tardy and meagre measure of compliance with