6 great distrust of the efficacy of that new bond of peace, and had replaced them with partisans who were only timid, but not unwilling. The Democratic President and Congress hesitated, but not long. They revised the last great compromise, and found, with delighted surprise, that it was so far from confirming the law of freedom of 1820, that, on the other hand, it exactly provided for the abrogation of that venerated statute; nay, that the compromise itself actually killed the spirit of the Missouri law, and devolved on Congress the duty of removing the lifeless letter from the national code. The deed was done. The new enactment not only repealed the Missouri prohibition of slavery, but it pronounced the people of Kansas and Nebraska perfectly free to establish freedom or slavery; and pledged Congress to admit them in due time as States, either of capital or of labor, into the Union. The Whig representatives of the capital States, in an hour of strange bewilderment, concurred; and the Whig party instantly went down, never to rise again. Democrats seceeded, and stood aloof; the country was confounded; and, amid the perplexities of the hour, a Republican party was seen gathering itself together with much earnestness, but with little show of organization, to rescue, if it were not now too late, the cause of freedom and labor, so unexpectedly and grievously imperilled in the Territories of the United States. I will not linger over the sequel. The popular sovereignty of Kansas proved to be the State sovereignty of Missouri, not only in the persons of the rulers, but even in the letter of an arbitrary and cruel code. The perfect freedom proved to be a hateful and intolerable bondage. From 1855 to 1860, Kansas sustained and encouraged only by the Republican party, has been engaged in successive and ever-varying struggles, which have taxed all her virtue, wisdom, moderation, energies, and resources, and often even her physical strength and martial courage, to save herself from being betrayed into the Union as a slave State. Nebraska, though choosing freedom, is, through the direct exercise of the Executive power, over-riding her own will, held as a slave Territory ; and New Mexico has relapsed voluntarily into the practice of slavery, from which she had redeemed herself while she yet remained a part of the Mexican Republic. Meantime, the Democratic party, advancing from the ground of popular sovereignty as far as that ground is from the ordinance of 1787, now stands on the position that both territorial governments and Congress are incompetent to legislate against slavery in the Territories, while they are not only competent, but are obliged, when it is necessary, to legislate for its protection there. In this new and extreme position the Democratic party now masks itself behind the battery of the Supreme Court, as if it were possibly a true construction of the Constitution, that the power of deciding practically forever between freedom and slavery in a portion of the continent far exceeding all that is yet organized, should be renounced by Congress, which alone possesses any legislative authority, and should be assumed and exercised by a court which can only take cognizance cf the great question collaterally, in a private action between individuals, and which action the Constitution will not suffer the court to entertain, if it involves twenty dollars of money, without the overruling intervention of a jury of twelve good and lawful men of the neighborhood where the litigation arises. The independent, ever-renewed, and ever recurring representative Parliament, Diet, Congress, or Legislature, is the one. chief, paramount, essential, indispensable institution in a Republic. Even liberty, guaranteed by organic law, yet if it be held by other tenure than the guardian care of such a representative popular assembly, is but precariously maintained, while slavery, enforced by an irresponsible judicial tribunal, is the completost possible development' of despotism. Mr. President, did ever the annals of any Government show a more rapid or more complete departure from the wisdom and virtue of its founders ? Did ever the Government of a great empire, founded on the rights of human labor, slide away so fast and so far, and moor itself so tenaciously on the basis of capital, and that capital invested in laboring men ? Did ever a free representative Legislature, invested with powers so great, and wth the guardianship of rights so important, of trusts so sacred, of interests so precious, and of hopes at once so noble and so comprehensive, surrender and renounce them all so unnecessarily, so unwisely, so fatally, and so ingloriously V If it be true, as every instinct
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