HIGHER LAW, a famous phrase used by William H. Seward (q.v.) 11 March 1850, in the United States Senate, on the admission of California as a State, which was held up by the Southern element to force the Congress to admit it as a slave State, or at least to divide it on the line of the Missouri Compromise (q.v.). Seward denied that the principle of compromise applied only to slavery, which was only one of many institutions, and held it equally applicable to the Territories, which were a possession to be enjoyed and administered in common by the States; and declared that the older States had no arbitrary power over them. He went on: °The Constitution regulates our stewardship; the Constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare, to liberty. But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The
territory is a part . . . of the common heri tage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happi ness.° And to Webster's assertion that it was absurd to re-enact the laws of God, he answered that °there is no human enactment which is just that is not a re-enactment of the law of God." It was his first set speech in the Senate, and at once made him the recognized leader of the radical section. The conservatives de nounced it as treasonable, implying that no one was under any obligation to support the Con stitution if he believed it in opposition to the law of God, and making the execution of any laws impossible.