Mr. WADE. I say I did, under those circumstances. I have been endeavoring to show that in m judgment, under the circumstances in which (ansas was sought to be admitted, the amount of population, although impertant at other times, was entirely swamped and over ridden by other paramount considerations. That is what I have been endeavoring to incul cate. But, then, when all other things are out of the way, population is aquestion of very great consideration in my judgment, because we should not, I think, give to any portion of our population an immenscl increased political power over others when ere is no paramount necessity for it. These considerations actu ated the ComTerritor long before the rebellion. Iremcmber very well I was on that committee at the time we organized some 4 or 5 Territories in the winter, I think, of 1861, and it was done by a kind of compromise here in order if possible to settle this terrible question that was agitated in the Territories wrth regard to slavery. The whole slavery question lbr several years turned on the fact as to what should be the status of that institution in the Territories, one party contending that they had a right to take all their slaves into any of the Territories to hold them there, and to make them slave Territories, and those of us who took a different view of it contending that they had no right to do that, and that the should be fence out by what was called the Jefferson proviso. That was the question, and that terrible question led us to organize these Territories when there was scarcely any population in them. Mr. Green, of Missouri, was at the head of the committee at that time; I was on it with him; and we there made this compromise, that we would admit the Territories without saying one word about slavery one way or the other, both of us being anxious to get rid of it. We did so, and the Senate and the other House agreed to what we had done, and we organized those Territories when under other circumstances undloubtedly they would not have been organize.