6 Sir, I have no fears of the people of Kansas if you give them any chance, even if you will be honest in counting their votes ; but here the matter is left to the President of the United States, who censured his Governor because he had refused to yield to an outrageous, notorious, palpable, undisputed fraud, and ultimately compelled him to resign. I say, when such things are done, what may we not suspect 2 I can hardly realize that I am in the Senate of the United States, when propositions calculated to blind the people, propositions calculated to hold out false colors, are presented in this way. In this scheme, you have evidently followed, as far as you could, the bill presented by the Senator from Kentucky ; but you have amended that most just clause of his, upon which the honesty of the whole transaction turned, in order that you might still keep in the hands of those who have proved themselves to be unworthy of such a trust, the power to decide against the people, as they have done heretofore, the fate of the new State. Now, sir, I am not so much of an enemy to the people of the South as they suppose. I think they will never gain anything by such a proposition as this. It is not because I suppose they will, that I manifest this zeal against it; but because, like the Senator from Kentucky, I know that the safety, the permanency, the true glory of our institutions, must be built upon the solid foundations of eternal right and justice; and this trickery, these frauds, although they may serve the purpose of a party for a day, are fraught with danger to’ the whole community, and will finally result in disastrous consequences, even to those for whose benefit they seem to be perpetrated. Mr. President, I have now said all that I intended to say, and much more, because when I see a proposition that appears to be unfair, and, I will say, that appears to be dishonest, I cannot retain exactly that equanimity that perhaps I ought. It may be all fair and all right, but I must announce the impressions that I deliberately have on that subject. I think it is palpably wrong— wrong to the high-minded people of the South, who, I am sure, when they understand it, will trample it beneath their feet as an unclean thing—unjust, palpably unjust, to the North, whom it places on a footing of inequality. Sir, if I did seek the destruction of the institutions of the South, I could devise no way more facile than that you have yourselves marked out; for, being in the minority, whenever you shall have divested yourselves of that character which we have conceded to you—that you are high- minded, honorable men—you will have lost the great stake in the Government that would ever enable you, as long as I you practiced on these principles, to en- ' joy your full share in the councils of this nation, and even more. As I said, I do not know but that this proposition may be right; but its appearance is absolutely I and deliberately wrong. Now, Mr. President, I regret that such a proposition should have been brought in here. Why would you not let Lecompton die, if you had not the force to put it through 2 I would infinitely prefer, for the honor of the nation, both North and South, that you had the force in both branches to put your Lecompton Constitution through here, rather than have been compelled to resort to this indirection, in order to accomplish the same result; because its 1 effect in demoralizing the nation, perverse and iniquitous as I think it was, would have been infinitely less than by this monster of a proposition. But I have said that it was no part of my purpose to detain the Senate. I have very feebly expressed the feelings that I entertain in regard to this proposition. I do not believe you can seduce the noble-minded people of Kansas, who have withstood all your persecutions so long, to succumb to such a scheme as this. You have exercised the whole ' powers of your Government; you have invoked your armies, and let them loose ' upon the defenceless people there; you have inflicted upon them hardships, and pursued them with a relentless persecution that I have never known before, and
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