you put them in danger of anarchy, without law or civil government. I suppose the senator will not deny, that men have certain rights, given by God, which none but tyrants can take away.

Mr. BROWN. Well, sir, I do not feel disposed to pursue this matter, as I perceive that my friend from Michigan and myself will never be able to agree upon the question.

On the 26th of August, 1856, Mr. BROWN again addressed the Senate as follows:

When this section was moved as an amendment to the last Kansas bill, reported from the Committee on Territories, I was one of three who voted against it. I was opposed to it then; I am opposed to it now; and mean to vote against it in any form in which it can be presented. When we passed the original Kansas act, we declared to all the world that the people of the territories had the right to make laws for themselves, subject only to the limitations of the Constitution. When we were asked what is meant by the limitations of the Constitution, and who is to determine what are those limitations, we answered on all sides that is a question to be determined by the courts. Never once by any living man was it asserted that Congress was to be the judge as to what the limitations of the Constitution were. Now, gentlemen come in and tell us that because, in their judgment, the laws of Kansas do not conform to the Constitution, we are called upon, and needs must obey the call, to overturn those laws.

Now, sir, I do not pretend to say that I would vote for such laws. I would not. I do not pretend to say that I approve of the laws as they stand. I do not approve of them. What I contend for, is simply that that is none of my business. The people of Kansas have passed those laws. If any portion of the citizens there are dissatisfied with them, they have precisely the same remedy which you and I, if we had gone to the territory, would have had if laws had been passed obnoxious to us. They have their right to appeal to the Supreme Court; and if that right is not amply secured by the present legislation of the country, I am ready to secure it in the amplest manner possible. I stand prepared to guaranty any sort of appeal which the people of Kansas, or any portion of them, may desire to prosecute. I would even go to the extent of putting these appeal cases at the head of the docket and requiring the Supreme Court to hear and determine them in advance of all other cases; but I am not willing, and will not, on my responsibility as a legislator, interpose with a declaration that these laws are unconstitutional, and that, therefore, I am not only called upon, but imperatively bound, to blot them from the statute-book. The senator from California says these laws are disgraceful to the age in which we live, and that he is ready to wipe them from the statute-book. Sir, if the Wilmot proviso had been passed, if they had laws excluding slavery from the territory, I should have regarded such laws as unconstitutional; but if I had come here and asked senators to help me to repeal such legislation, would they have done it? Would they not have told me, "according to the original bill you are remitted to the courts for your remedy; if any constitutional right of yours has been invaded, appeal to the courts; seek your remedy there, and if you obtain it, we acquiesce; if you fail, you

must submit." That measure of justice which you would mete out to me or my people, mete out to others and their people. That measure of justice which you would mete out to the South, mete out to the North, and then there will be no just ground of complaint anywhere. I ask you whether you are going to say to the Southern States, "if the legislation be against you, you must abide by it until you can have overturned it in court;" and to the people of the Northern States, "if the legislation be against your prejudices or your principles, you have but to appeal to Congress, and Congress will set the matter right for you?"

Sir, I regard this as flagrantly unjust-as one of the most unjust propositions, all things considered, that has ever been brought before this body. It is not only yielding to a wild spirit which is threatening to overturn the institutions of the country, thereby encouraging that spirit to go on to still further aggression, but it is, in my judgment, a palpable, downright, outrageous disregard of the rights of one half of the Union.

There is but one point, in my judgment, upon which this proceeding can be justified; and that is the point taken by the Free-soil portion of this body. If they are right that this whole legislation is the work of usurpation and tyranny-if they are right in the supposition that persons thrust themselves into the territory and arbitrarily made laws under which they do not mean to live and under which they are not living,-then it is your duty to interpose and wipe all the laws from the statute-book; not only those which are obnoxious, but those which would otherwise be acceptable, upon the broad ground that it was a usurpation and a tyranny. I hold that you have no right to discriminate. One senator rises and says, "this law is obnoxious to me," and forthwith the Senate blots it out. Another rises and says, "this is obnoxious to me," and you blot that out. And when you have blotted out enough to obtain a majority of the Senate, there you stop. There are still complaining senators, still senators, representatives from states, who say "there are other laws obnoxious." Why not listen to their complaints, and wipe out those laws also?

Sir, if I believed, with the senators on the other side of the chamber, that unauthorized persons had made these laws, and now refused to live under them, I should go with the senator from Massachusetts, not only for blotting out the obnoxious portion, but all the other, and giving a new start to the government; but I believe no such thing; I have seen no evidence of it. I believe that the legislature which made those laws was as fair a legislature as ever represented so new a people anywhere. That there were irregularities in the election is true beyond all doubt. These irregularities happen in old, and well-settled, and well-organized communities. Can you expect more regularity in a territory, situated as Kansas is, than in a state? It was the legislature of the territory. Some of its members doubtlessly were irregularly chosen, but it represented the people of Kansas, and it was their only representative. It passed these laws. The next election comes off in October-only a little more than a month from to-day. If the people of Kansas are not satisfied with these laws, let them repeal them, as a dissatisfied party in a state repeals their laws. What I maintain is, that you have no right to interfere. Under your grant to the territory, it had the same right to pass laws for itself which a state had to pass laws for itself. It has the same

right to pass laws for itself which Massachusetts, or Virginia, or any other state, has to pass laws to govern people within their own limits. I dare say the gentlemen on the other side of the chamber think there are many statutes on the Virginia statute-book that are outrageous; but would you call upon the Senate to wipe them out? Would you call upon Congress to interfere? Massachusetts complained of certain legislation of South Carolina, and the imprisonment of what she chose to call her colored citizens, but she never asked Congress to repeal the act of South Carolina. Why? Because South Carolina had a right to pass outrageous laws, if she chose to do so, and govern her people by them. Congress had no business to interpose.

Now, if the principle upon which you passed your Kansas bill was the correct principle, that the people had the right to pass such laws as they chose to pass, subject only to the limitations of the Constitution; and if it was true, as you said, that the limitations of the Constitution were to be determined by the courts, and not by Congress, under what pretence do you bring this bill here, and ask for action upon it? The people have legislated; you think they have legislated erroneously; but there is no appeal but to the court to overturn their legislation.

I do not care to pursue this subject. It opens a wide field for debate. It opens up all the principles on which the territories are governed. It involves all our ideas of the powers of government. I am not going to run off into this branch of the subject. I plant myself upon the contract which we entered into in passing the original Kansas bill. Sir, the people of the territory have no right to legislate for themselves, if you exercise a supervisory control to overturn their legislation whenever you are dissatisfied with it. My venerable friend from Michigan maintained this morning, as he has always maintained, that the people have a right -I understand him to say it is a sovereign right of the people-to make laws for themselves; but when they make the laws, and they do not meet the approbation of my friend from Michigan, he throws them over

board.

Mr. CASS. I never said that.
Mr. BROWN. But you act it.
Mr CASS. I never acted it.

Mr. BROWN. Does not my friend from Michigan admit that the people of Kansas have a right to pass laws for themselves?

Mr. CASS. I am not going to discuss this matter, as I am rather a point of attack to-day. I wish to observe, that I maintain, as I have always done, that the people of Kansas have certain inalienable rights secured by the Constitution. I maintain that, in a territory, American citizens have no right to institute a government of themselves, unless driven to it by your neglect. I maintain that, when you do institute a government, they may then go on and exercise governmental powers, which powers they do not derive from you, but from the Constitution. You give them the means to exercise them. That has been my doctrine. Now, Mr. President, I am not going to touch the point of the honorable senator from Mississippi, but merely to vindicate myself. I believe that the people of the territory of Kansas have the right to exercise their domestic privileges, if I may so term them, for themselves, and you have no right to interfere; but I believe that if the Congress of the United States pass a law, they have the same right to see that that law

is faithfully executed which they had to pass it. Whether you derive your power from one clause of the Constitution or another to establish a territorial government, you have the same right to take care that that government is faithfully executed. Then, if the territorial legislature pass laws which are in the very face of the Constitution and in the face of your organic act, it is my opinion that Congress has a right to correct their error.

Mr. BROWN. I so understood my friend. I do not think there is any difference at all between his understanding of himself and my understanding of his opinions. I am not quarrelling with him about it; but my own mind is so obtuse that it fails or refuses to perceive the difference between the position of my friend as stated by himself and as stated by me.

The people of the territory either have the right to make laws for themselves or they have not. If they have the right to do it, I maintain that you have no right to overturn their laws; because, if, whenever they run counter to your views, and make laws which you do not approve, you have the right to overturn them, that very right, it appears to me, involves the other right of making the laws for them in the beginning. If you have the right to say that their laws are either good or bad, according to your judgment, and to be maintained or not maintained, as you choose, it certainly embraces the inferior right of saying, in the beginning, what sort of laws they shall have. It would be a shorter way to tell them, in advance, "here are our notions of what laws you ought to have; take them and be content." I do not know what becomes of squatter sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and all that. When we act thus, it seems to me that all goes by the board.

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE, MAY 6, 1856, ON THE SUBJECT OF INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS BY THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT.

MR. PRESIDENT: It seems to me that we of the Democratic faith have gone sadly astray on this subject of internal improvements. We have either passed resolutions which we do not understand, or having passed them we deliberately trample them under foot. It is high time, I think, that we strike those resolutions from the book of our principles, or else resolve to adhere to them. In 1848, when our venerable friend from Michigan was made the standard-bearer of the Democratic party, we resolved against a general system of internal improvements. The Whigs in my part of the country charged precisely what we have before us in the Senate to-day. They said, "You mean to have no general system of improvement, but you mean to have it in detail." When I was appealed to I said, with that frankness which I trust has always been and always will be a part of my character, "We contemplate no such thing; we are incapable of declaring against a general system which shall bear equally in its burdens upon all parts of the country, and which shall

dispense its blessings on all parts of the country, and then go for a special system of legislation which shall benefit one section at the expense of another."

I believed then, that my party was sincere on this question, and that, in declaring against a general system, it declared against the system in the aggregate and in detail. It seems, however, that I am to learn from the Senate now a different lesson. Individual members of the party-I do not say that it is the action of the party in the aggregate-individuals representing its interests and the interests of the country here, do support these measures of special legislation. I am free to say now, as I have said at home, that, if we are to have internal improvements at all by the general government, I am for a general system-a system which shall dispense its blessings alike on every section, and the burdens of which shall be borne equally by all parts of the Union. I am opposed to sectional legislation, to class legislation, to legislation for the benefit of particular neighborhoods, states, or sections of the confederacy.

Two years ago we passed a bill distributing about $5,000,000 of the public money among the several states for the improvement of rivers and harbors. We sent it to the President of the United States; and whatever other faults may be found with him, it stands, in my judgment, to his eternal credit that he vetoed that bill. Now, sir, what have we here? The items of that bill are taken up, one by one, and each is incorporated into a separate bill. That which he could not gulp down at one draught, he is expected to take by piecemeal. You do not propose to physic the President on the good old plan of the allopathists, but you approach him with your homeopathic doses, and you give them to him in infinitesimal parts, dividing them up as though you expected that, when he could not take the whole pill at once, he would take it at a thousand different swallows if it were divided. I do not know what he will do, but I know what he ought to do. When you send him the first of these infinitesimal parts, these homeopathic doses, he ought to treat it precisely as he did treat the whole dose, and throw it back upon you.

If we are to have these improvements made at all by the money of the federal government, I say again, let us have a system. When we declared as a great party against a general system of internal improvements, I understood that we were declaring against it in the aggregate; and as the major always includes the minor, when we declared against the greater evil, I supposed that we declared against all the little evils. which lay beneath it. As a member of the Democratic party, speaking what I conceived to be its interests, maintaining what I believed to be its principles, I repelled the imputation, that while we were opposed to a general system of internal improvements we were for doing the same thing in detail.

Sir, this must stop. You must either cease to pass these bills, or strike opposition to internal improvements from the platform of your party. This kind of cheatery and humbuggery on the country cannot be long tolerated. When you say that you cannot improve rivers and harbors that it is against the principles of the party to do so, and then take up a harbor in this state, and a river somewhere else, and go on scattering your improvements all over the Union, taxing one man's constituents for the benefit of another's, you cannot expect the people to believe that you are acting fairly. Such an idea may pass current here;