2 ■ ears from Southern gentlemen day after day, but a little while ago. Now they have thrown this absurd position to the winds, and I thank God for it. They seem to admit that the people, after all, must have the right, in some shape, to pass upon the institutions under which they are to live. So far, it is a great improvement on the Lecompton concern. But if the people are to pass upon the Lecompton Constitution, why not let them do it directly? Will any man be deceived by the verbiage in which this proposition is couched? Have you not left the people to pass upon it? If so, why not submit it in such a plain and fair manner that the people can all understand it ? Sir, this proposition reads upon its face as though it was a premium for votes. Are the people to vote directly upon the Constitution under which they live ? Not by any means; but they are to vote upon a grant of land; they are to vote whether they will accept a gift from the Government of five or six million acres of land; and if they decide to take the land, that decision is to drag after it the Lecompton Constitution, that they have repudiated over and over again. Was ever any such thing as this concocted by a statesman, for the action of the people? Is a land grant the principal thing in framing a State Constitution? Sir, it seems to be a bid of land for liberty, a bribe held out. “ A ill you, people of Kansas, surrender your liberties for land? ” That is the question; it cannot be disguised. I impugn directly the motives of no man, but I state what the effect of this action will be. How will it appear to the world, say what you will about it ? If the people will vote themselves so much land, then they surrender themselves to a slave Constitution, which you and I know they have repudiated over and over again. It is not competent for me to state the motives which have prompted to such action as this; but you vote for the incident, and the principal is to follow. How absurd and inconsequential I Why, Mr. President, if I should make just such a proposition as that, to obtain your to the people, and they shall be at liberty to frame their Constitution.” For that purpose the committee might have selected any precedent they wished— they might have taken the enabling act for Minnesota, or any similar one, and they would have found no objection to it. We should all have voted for a proposition of that kind, just to all parties ; we should have permitted the people to come up now fairly to the work of framing a Constitution; we should have said to them, “make it republican in form; submit it to our consideration; and if we find it .to be such, we will admit you with it.” Why did it not occur to this committee that that was the way to settle the controversy, if a settlement of it was indeed desired? The proposition which they have made, while it seems to me in a certain aspect to be humiliating to the South, is unjust, if not an open insult, to the North. It is humiliating to the South because it is a total and entire abandonment of the principle on which many of them staked their determination not to exist in the Union at all; for they said, “let us have the Lecompton Constitution, or we will go out of the Union ourselves.” That proposition they have surrendered; they have given it up ; they do not pretend that they can stand by it, unless it is in some sort submitted and thrown back to the people to pass upon. So far it is right; so far it is just; and I was glad to see the committee yield thus far to the reasons and arguments which had been addressed to them, showing that their Lecompton concern was fraudulent; that it did not embody the will of the people; that it was a fraud ; and that their legal position was fraught with tyranny and danger in all subsequent time. That position has been repudiated and abandoned by them. We hear no more of the omnipotence of Conventions assembled to frame Constitutions. We hear no more of their being armed with supreme power to put upon the necks of a people just such a Constitution as they please, without the people having power to get rid of it. That was the position we heard rung in our
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