3 vote upon a private bill, and it should come out to the world that I had done it, I I presume every just-minded Senator here would vote promptly to expel me from the body, as unworthy of a seat in it. The offer is : “ So much land if you vote for this Constitution ; if you vote against it, you shall have neither land nor anything else.” Mr. President, I recollect well that in the course of some observations which I made not long ago, you, sir, [Mr. Biggs in the chair,] put the question to me: Suppose a slave Constitution were presented to Congress, would I vote for it ? I recollect well the answer I made to you, and your apparent surprise at the absurdity of the answer. Yet 1 find the President of this body to-day assuming my position, and voting for the same proposition, only reversing its application. I would not vote for the admission of a slave Constitution; nor will you vote for a free one. I do not complain of you ; I cannot complain of you, because I occupy about the same ground that you will ilo an hour hence, when the vote is taken, except that practically our positions are reversed in the application of them. You come from a slave State, and I from a free State. The country will unders band the positions we all occupy on this subject, and J do not care how soon they are understood by all. Mr. President, it has been sought to break the force of the objections to this scheme by saying that there was uncertainty about the people of Kansas accepting the grant proposed in your original bill. This is a strange apology, and it comes at a strange and an unfortunate time. Sir, do you not know that the subject was mooted in the Committee on Territories, and it was said that no kind of objection could arise from any such thing; that we had a right to modify the ordinance, and make what grant of land we pleased to the Territory ; and if they rejected the Constitution on account of our not giving them as much as they thought they were entitled to, they would not be a State; but if they accepted the Constitution by organizing under it, subject to the provision we had made, that was an end of it ? How happens it now that you make this whole controversy turn, as it were, on the uncertainty whether the people will accept a donation such as you have made to every other State ? Why in the name of Heaven is it now paraded here as the main reason why you have reversed your action ? Mr. Green. The Committee on Territories never did say that it was the right of the committee or of Congress to dictate the terms upon which the State should be admitted. They have always claimed that; but on the question of contract on the subject of lands, it was matter of agreement. The formation and adoption of a Constitution, the committee held, was a question with which the Senate and House of Representatives had nothing to do; and that has been the point all the time. I think, therefore, the Senator does injustice to the committee when he says that they thought the subject of the grant of lands was a proper matter for the consideration of the Convention of the Territory. Not so; it is a matter of agreement, proposition, acceptance ; but the Constitution is a different thing; that is a finality already. Mr. Wade. I do not deny that. That is just exactly what we did agree. We agreed that it was a proposed compact, and that if the proposition on our part should be accepted by the organization of a State Government under it, it would be very well, and their action under it would show their agreement to our proposed contract. That is what we agreed to in committee, and it is a sound principle of law; and the idea of repudiating it is not twenty-four hours old. That is how we agreed; and yet the Senator from Virginia rises here, and, to apologize for this misshapen production of the committee of conference, makes it all to turn on the uncertainty of whether the people of Kansas would accept this proposition. I might ask that Senator, or any other who has had anything to do with this subject, if that matter labored in your mind, how in the name of Heaven
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