KANSAS. 5 Mission to be invalid. They further believe that the legislature never had any legal existence, for nothing can be legal which is unconstitutional ; and no legislature of a Territory or State in this Union can be constitutional, unless it be created in conformity with a republican form of government; hence, a legislature imposed upon the people by fraud, by force, by residents of another State, adversely to the will of the people, can have no legal existence, and no act of the governor can legalize a legislature thus created—especially when the said governor is not elected by the people, but appointed by other authority. In the opinion of your memorialists, the issuing of certificates by the governor to those not legally elected, cannot legalize the election. Hence, even admitting the right of Congress to extend a Territorial government over Territories, the legislature elected on the 30th of March, 1855, having been elected in violation of the organic act, and in the manner before described, can have no legal existence, and their enactments are a nullity. Notwithstanding the injustice done to the people of Kansas, notwithstanding three invasions of the Territory for the purpose of controlling the elections, the people submitted, preferring to respect laws enacted by a body imposed upon them by fraud and violence, to living longer without government. Wishing to preserve the peace and quiet, and to promote the prosperity of the country, they took no measures for throwing off the burden thus forced upon them. But, when further developments of this system of tyranny were made—when the laws enacted by the legislature proved conclusively, to your memorialists, a determination to enslave the people, they, conscious of their rights as freemen, with the constitution for their guide, resolved to fall back upon their inalienable rights, and throw around themselves that protection which is afforded by a State government. Your memorialists respectfully present, for your consideration, some selections from the acts of the ,Territorial legislature, which the people of Kansas, while conscious of their rights as American citizens, could not submit to. The eleventh section of an act entitled “An act to regulate elections,” says: “ Every free white male citizen of the United States, and every free male Indian, who is made a citizen by treaty or otherwise, and over the age of twenty-one years, who shall be an inhabitant of the Territory, and of the county or district in which he offers to vote, and shall have paid a Territorial tax, shall be a qualified elector for all elective officers ; and all Indians who are inhabitants of this Territory, and who may have adopted the customs of the white man, and who are liable to pay taxes, shall be dtemed citizens.” As this does not require that voters shall have inhabited the Territory any stated time, it allows our enemies to take advantage of residents thereof, as they have done, in entering the Territory, voting, and returning to their homes in an adjoining State, on the same day; claiming at the same time, that those who were at the polls at the time of voting were actual inhabitants. It is believed that this act was intended to invite illegal voting ; and it is feared, that so long as the people of Kansas remain under a Territorial government, the
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