15 say that it makes no difference whether there is Slavery in it or not, and that the bare question is on the submission. I agree that they are right in principle on that. The people should pass upon anything and everything connected with their welfare, touching the Constitution under which they are to live; but nevertheless the Slavery question is the great matter that divides us. Mr. President, there is something extraordinary in the manner in which this Constitution was submitted. Was the like of it ever heard of before ? I have heard floating rumors that the ingenuity of this whole District was invoked to invent that form of submission ; but I do not know how the fact was. I do not believe that rude Border Ruffianism had the ingenuity to invent these meshes of Slavery. I fear that the fingers of men at the other end of the avenue may be tainted with it. I do not know that; but I have shrewd surmises about it. How was it submitted? I will ask, first, whj did you submit it at all ? On the other side of this Chamber, you claim that the Convention was under no obligations whatever to the people ; that the Convention was supreme; that it might do as it pleased; that, if it did not submit it, the people must be content—a doctrine as much fraught with despotism as anything that can be found in the Eastern world. You say that a set of men called into a Convention can, at their will, frame an instrument by which the whole people are to be bound, hand and foot, against their will. Why, sir, it is an absurdity, in my judgment, altogether too palpable for argument in any part of the United States. If we hold our liberties by such a tenure as that, they stand on a more fragile basis than I have supposed. Why, sir, I have always sup posed that everybody understood, that when a Convention was framing a Constitution, it was merely making a proposition to the people who were to be governed by it. They say to the people: u Will you have this ? We have done our best to make a Constitution which we, as members of this community, have believed would be acceptable to you. We propose, therefore, that you look into it, and, if it meets your approbation, make it your Constitution.” I have always supposed that that was the meaning of the action of such a Convention ; and certainly it is, if American liberty means anything. The men assembled at Lecompton dare not present their Constitution to this body without some attempt to cover it up ; they must make an attempt to submit it. How have they done it ? Why, sir, they have contrived, by ingenui ty, to get up a scheme whereby the form of voting might be preserved to the people, and the result be the same, let them vote as they would. It makes me think of a man who built a hog pen up in our country once, and the rails’ were eo crooked and winding, that when his hogs got through, and thought they had got out, as they wound along they came right in again. [Laughter.] So here, the people were to say •‘Constitution with Slavery,” or “Constitution without Slavery.” If they said “ Constitution with Slavery,” that gave them Slavery up to their ears ; it never could be done away with. If they voted “ Constitution without Slavery,” what would an unsophisticated man suppose would come then? He would suppose he had got out of the pen; but the fact is, it twisted him right in where he was before. He had not gone an inch; Slavery was there; it was to be there ; it was to be protected there forever, vote as you would. And they extorted an oath, before they put this nefarious fraud to the people, that they should support it. Now, sir, whoever devised this scheme, had a more mean and contemptible opinion of the American people than is consistent wij;h Republicanism or Democracy. I do not believe there is a despot bn God’s earth that dare deal thus with his people; and you say they are to be bound by such a Peter Funk operation as that! Do you suppose men are to be entrapped and deprived of their liberties in this way ? The only difference in the result, whether they voted for the Constitution with Slavery or without it, was, whether they would allow the future importation of slaves into the State, or whether those now there should be kept in Slavery, with their posterity, forever. It was to be a slave State, and, in the language of the President, as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina, whether the people voted that they would have the Constitution with Slavery, or whether they said they would have it without Slavery. Is not that a fine aspect to hold up to the American people, to suppose they are to be gulled by a such a thing as that ? Then they provided, in the schedule, that the vote should be returned to one John Calhoun, the President of the Convention. I deny, as a legal proposition, that Calhoun could politically live one moment; after the Convention had expired. All the incidents die with the principal He was defunct, and it was not in the power of the Convention to keep him on foot in his official form.one hour after that. But, parsing by that point, we see the shrewd ingenuity with which it was done. This Calhoun was empowered, as dictator there, to fix all the election districts, to appov t ihe judges, his own mere creatures and instruments, to make the returns, and they were to make them to him, and, as it is construed now, to make them either this year or next year, just as he pleases. They said the returns should be made to him in eight days after the election, but he need never exhibit them at all; and he has proclaimed in this city, to the honorable Senator from Illinois, who has stated it on this floor, that unless this Constitution be adopted, he, in his sovereign majesty, never will make known what was done I
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