8 of the United States, paramount to any popular sovereignty within the Territories, and even to the authority of Congress itself. In this ill-omened act, the Supreme Court forgot its own dignity, which had always been maintained with just judicial jealousy. They forgot that the province of a court is simply 11 jus dicere” and not at all 11 jus dare.'’ They forgot, also, that one “foul sentence does more harm than many foul examples; for the last do but corrupt the stream, while the former corrupteth the fountain.” And they and the President alike forgot that judicial usurpation is more odious and intolerable than any other among the manifold practices of tyranny. The day of Inauguration came—the first one by the usual lengthened procession, arrived and took his seat on the portico. The Supreme Gouri attended him there, in robes which yet exacted public reverence. The people, unaware of the import of the whisperings carried on between the President and the Chief Justice, and imbued with among all the celebrations of that great national pageant that was to be desecrated by a coalition _______7 ... ___ 0 _ „_B___ _ ___ between the Executive and Judicial departments, demonstrations of intervention in the Territory, to undermine the National Legislature and the Here occurred, not a new want, but an old one liberties of the people. The President, attended r evived—a Governor for Kansas. Robert J. Walk- , just the man to conduct the fraudulent inchoate veneration for both, filled the avenues and gar- proceedings of the projected Lecompton Conven- dens far away as the eye could reach. The Pres- tion to a conclusion, by dividing the friends of ident addressed them in words as bland as those Free Labor in the Territory, or by casting upon which the worst of all the Roman Emperors pro- them the responsibility of defeating their own nounced when he assumed the purple. He an- favorite policy by impracticability and contu- nounced (vaguely, indeed, but with self-satisfac- macy. He wanted for this purpose only an army tion) the forthcoming extra-judicial exposition of and full command of the Executive exchequer of the Constitution, and pledged his submission to it as authoritative and final. The Chief Justice and his Associates remained silent. The Seuate, too, were there—constitutional witnesses of the transfer of administration. They too were silent, although the promised usurpation was to subvert the authority over more than half of the empire which Congress had assumed contemporaneously with the birth of the nation, and had exercised without interruption for near seventy years. It cost the President, under the circumstances, little exercise of magnanimity now to promise to the people of Kansas, on whose neck he bad, with the aid of the Supreme Court, hung the millstone coxu. one u VUUlbjUUll LUC UllLLBLUIlU LUie MtLU. rvquiieu tL VCUBUH ttuu. IVglHULJ' VI VUbViB of Slavery, a fair trial in .their attempt to cast it । to be made by authorities designated by itself, off, and hurl it to the earth, when they should come to organize a State Government. Alas! that even this cheap promise, uttered under such great solemnities, was only made to be broken! The pageant ended. On the 5th of March, the Judges, without even exchanging their silken robes for courtiers’ gowns, paid their salutations to the President, in the Executive Palace. Doubtlessly the President received them as graciously as Charles the First did the Judges who had at his instance subverted the statutes of English Liberty. On the 6th of March, the Supreme Court dismissed the negro suitor, Dred Scott, to return to his bondage; and having thus disposed of that private action for an alleged private wrong, on the ground of want of jurisdiction in the case, they proceeded with amusing solemnity to pronounce the opinion, that if they had had such jurisdiction, still the unfortunate negro would have had to remain in bondage, unrelieved, because the Missouri prohibition violates rights of general property involved in Slavery, paramount to the authority of Congress. A few days later, copies of this opinion were multiplied by the Senate’s press, and scattered in the name of the Senate broadcast over the land, and their publication has not yet been disowned by the Senate. Simultaneously, Dred Scott, who had played the hand of dummy in this interesting political game, unwittingly, yet to the, complete satisfaction of his adversary, was voluntarily ema^Mpated; and thus received from his master,-as a reward, the freedom which the Court had denied him as a right. The new President of the United States, having organized this formidable judicial battery at the CapitoL, was now ready £o begin his active er, born and reared in Pennsylvania, a free State, but long a citizen and resident of Mississippi, a slave State, eminent for talent and industry, devoted to the President and his party, plausible and persevering, untiring and efficient, seemed promises of favor and of threats of punishment. Frederick P. Stanton, of Tennessee, honorable and capable, of persuasive address, but honest ambition, was appointed his Secretary. The new agents soon found they had assumed a task that would tax all their energies and require all their adroitness. On the one side, the Slave -Labor party were determined to circumvent the people, and secure, through the Lecompton Convention, a slave State. On the other, the people were watchful, and determined not to be circumvented, and in no case to submit. Elections for delegates to that body were at hand. The Legislature had re ir d a census and registry of voters and this duty had been only partially performed in fifteen of the thirty-four counties, and altogether omitted in the other nineteen. The party of Slave Labor insisted on payment of taxes as *a condition of suffrage. The Free Labor party deemed the whole proceeding void, by reason of the usurpation practiced,' and of the defective arrangements for the election. They discovered a design to surprise in the refusal of any guaranty that the Constitution,' when framed, should be submitted to the people, for their acceptance or rejection, preparatory to an application under it for the admission of Kansas into the Union. The Governor, drawing from the ample treasury of the Executive at his command, made due exhibitions of the army, and threatened the people with an acceptance of the Lecompton Constitution, however obnoxious to them, if they should refuse to vote. With these menaces, he judi-
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