there under contract for the very purpose of ex-
cluding them. Civil war almost ensued-civil
strife certainly did. It was necessary to bring in
the strong arm of Federal power through its mili-
tary force, in order to repress it. Soldiers were
quartered there for more than two years to keep
peace amongst the people, and make them obe-
dient to the laws. What then did we find on the

SENATE.

the people are subordinate to law; that political power can be exercised only through the forms of law and of organized communities. Mobs, be they large or small, who attempt to exercise political power, ought to be and are repressed by the strong arm of law. We can only know what the wish of the people is, when it is expressed in conformity to law; to look elsewhere for it, is to

tween the judges of that court and an incoming
President, I could see no other conclusion in his
mind than that which mine attained, that the prac-
tical mode of getting rid of corrupt men was to
put them out of the way by some mode. I shall
of course not undertake to criticise now, any new
scheme of organization which the honorable Sen-
ator may have in view, more especially as he tells
us that it is not as yet matured in his own judg-part of the emigrant aid societies in the New Eng-lapse at once to anarchy.
ment; but I think he has foreshadowed enough to
show that the leading idea in his mind is, by some
mode of sectional organization, to make that a
political court which shall represent on the bench
not the political views of the day alone, but the
popular emotions of the day; which shall repre-
sent on the bench political parties; and more than
all, judges who shall be placed in some condition
to be subservient to the fluctuations of political
parties. I cannot conceive how a court can be or-
ganized in such manner as to attain the ends which
the Senator avows, unless it is organized in such
a way as to make it the mere conduit of the party
passions of the day-to popularize the court of
last resort; but I have no right to criticise this
new organization which the honorable Senator
suggests, because he has not yet matured it in his
own mind, as he tells us.

Mr. SEWARD. The honorable Senator will indulge me in one word more. Perhaps I ought to have added that I do expect that the court will be brought in its principles and its practices to conformity with the Constitution of the United States and the sentiments and principles of humanity and justice, as I stated in the speech on which the Senator is remarking.

Mr. MASON. As the Senator understands them.

Mr. SEWARD. As I understand them. Mr. MASON. And his party. Mr. SEWARD. No; as I understand them. Mr. MASON. Now, Mr. President, let us come back to the Kansas question. A law was passed creating territorial governments in Kansas and Nebraska, according to their appropriate boundaries. The question of slavery was left open to be decided by the people to be affected by it, as I have said, in consequence, not of the spirit only, but the letter of the laws of 1850. What was the next step? Hardly was the ink dry by which the bill became a law, when there was fulminated from the halls of legislation here a manifesto to all the Abolition societies of the North, telling them that the Territory was thrown open to population, and inviting and encouraging them, under every stimulant that could arouse their passions or excite their hopes, to throw their people into it with the utmost rapidity. I do not claim to be wiser than others, but yet to have some little knowledge of humanity and of my fellow-men; and I say that the state of things that has existed in Kansas ever since; events which Senators delight in depicting as the efforts of great and nobleminded freemen to vindicate their rights; scenes of blood, rapine, and murder, disgraceful to the age, of fraud and violence in every form of licensed depravity, were but the legitimate consequences of throwing (by artificial means altogether) a population utterly irresponsible into a common Territory, under instructions, if not under contract, to carry out the political views of those who sent them. The emigrant aid societies formed a new feature in the laws governing emigration in our country-societies that were got up with large capital for the purpose of throwing a population into the Territory of Kansas at once which should preoccupy it, in order that politicians might effect what the laws had prohibited, in preventing the expansion of slavery. I do not mean to say that we had any law, or could pass any law, prohibiting it; but I do mean to say, before the American people and before posterity, that those who were instrumental in getting up such societies and in carrying through their objects, are responsible for the bloodshed, and rapine, and murder, and the utter destitution of every moral principle, which have disgraced that Territory ever since. Slaveholders from the adjacent and contiguous States, and from a distance, went there, as they had a right to do, with their slaves, and mingled with this population. The Territory became at once a scene of contention and strife, because they found it preoccupied by men who had been sent

land States? Pen and pulpit were employed alike
to fan the flame and to supply the munitions for
civil war in the Territory of Kansas; sermons
were preached; the popular mind was stirred up
from its foundations to induce them to contribute
money and fire-arms to be used in Kansas against
their fellow-countrymen. If that is the sort of
government which these peace and order-loving
people prefer, be it so. Our duty only is to see
that the laws are enforced; that the laws are
obeyed; that the institutions of the country are
preserved unimpaired, and not made the sport
either of reckless fanaticism, or the calmer calcula-
tions of reckless aspirants. I think the President
at the head of the last Administration, as well as
the present, have done no more than their duty
in seeing that the laws were duly enforced by the
full use of the military power.

Another of the incidental or auxiliary objections put out, like skirmishers, to mask the battery which is directed against the form of government adopted by Kansas, is, that the constitution was not submitted to the people after the convention framed it. It is said that this was an interference with popular sovereignty; that the people of Kansas had a right to have it submitted to a popular vote; and that if it were not submitted, or if it were submitted in part and not in the whole, it was in derogation of the great principle of popu. lar sovereignty. Mr. President, what is popular sovereignty? I do not mean that term in the acceptation of demagogues or politicians: but what is it in the meaning of law, American law and American sense? It means nothing in the world but an assertion of a great principle, which none of us denies, that a people constituting a political community are their own rulers. How is it carried out in that system of government first estab lished upon this continent? That the popular will can only be known through their representatives, or through the forms of law passed to ascertain their will; that the turbulent masses, be they large or small, are to be treated as turbulent masses, and to be repressed by force if necessary. Perfect obedience to law lies at the very foundation of every security of government here, as force is the foundation of the security of every government elsewhere.

when the constitution is here as the act of that people, we can look into it for no purpose whatever but to see what is its form; and if its form is republican, we have no right to look further.

What next? Kansas in due time, through its
regularly organized government, passed a law to
take the sense of the people whether they desired
to remain in a territorial condition, or to become
a State. The polls were then thrown open; the
vote was cast; and it was found that there was a
very large majority in favor of organizing a State
government. This law was fairly devised to
take the sense of the people, to register the votes
so as to preclude fraud, and for electing delegates
to a convention to frame a constitution. They
were elected, and they formed a constitution. Im-
mediately upon the adjournment of that conven- Sir, I need hardly say to this body that, whether
tion, it became manifest that nothing was to be Kansas is to be admitted or rejected as a State,
left undone or unattempted to defeat its work. It we can rightfully look no further into her consti-
was said that frauds were committed at the polls, tution than see the government is republican in
and gentlemen here have been insisting that we form. We, to be sure, are bound to see that it is
should send out commissions to Kansas, or bring a constitution framed by the people of Kansas,
people from Kansas here, to inquire into them. I and not by anybody else-not to have one im-
think it very probable that frauds were commit-posed, as some gentlemen seem to suggest; but
ted at the polls. It would be very remarkable, in
such a population as they seem to have there, if
frauds were not committed; but I should like to
know what popular election has been held in many
of the States of this Union-I will not designate
them further-under great popular excitement,
where frauds have not been charged upon both
parties, precisely as they are charged in Kansas?
In a neighboring State, within less than fifty miles
from this Capitol, such allegations were made at
the last elections; and questions are now depend-
ing before the coordinate branch of Congress to
determine, not only whether frauds were perpe-
trated at the polls, but whether the people were
not kept from the polls by armed resistance-a
matter coming properly before that House as
affecting the election of its members. Do we not
know that some years ago, in New York, they
got up a sort of popular term, understood almost
as a technical term, called "pipe-laying?" Parties
charged each other at every election that took
place with fraud, by means of what they called
"pipe-laying"-the very offense now ascribed to
the people of Kansas. It was said that men were
carried from Philadelphia to the city of New
York, or the villages on the Hudson, under the
pretext of correspondence to get leaden pipe, or
something of that sort; strangers were brought

there who were to control the vote of the citizens
of the State. I know not whether it was true or
false; but I do know that a vote has not been
taken in many of the States in times of popular
excitement, that the successful party were not
charged with having carried the clection by fraud
or violence.

But, sir, be such charges true or not, is a matter
that belongs to Kansas to determine. It does not
belong to us. They are competent to determine
it; we are not. Nor should we give any heed or
countenance to such charges, unless shown to be
true by the constituted authorities of Kansas.
We can know the people of Kansas only as we
can know any other people on this continent,
through an organized government. Sir, it is the
great boast of the institutions of this country, that

The organic law providing a territorial government for Kansas provides that their Legislature shall have committed to them all subjects of rightful legislation; that they shall regulate all their domestic institutions in their own way, subject to the Constitution, and contains an utter disclaimer of any intent or purpose in the Federal councils, whilst they are so conducted, to interfere with them at any time or for any purpose.

Now, what has been done? Only what every other State has done. They passed a law prescribing the mode of electing representatives to a convention, confided to that convention the power to frame a State government, and did no more, as far as legislation was concerned. The law did not require that the constitution, when framed under the authority confided to the convention, should be submitted to the people. It was competent to the law to have done it. In my own State of Virginia, when a convention was called there, a few years ago, to amend or alter the form of government, the law calling the convention provided that the constitution should be submitted to the people; but suppose the law had been silent: would it not have been competent to the conven tion to submit it or to withhold it, as the convention thought proper? In other words, if the law which authorizes the convention does not prescribe that the constitution is to be submitted to a popular vote, it remits the whole power to those who represent the people in convention. That.I should say, must of necessity be the law of this question, unless you are to look outside of law and outside of government, to get at the popular will. I say the convention unquestionably pos sessed the power to submit the whole constitu tion, or none of it, or part of it. They did submit,

I

think with statesmanlike propriety, the only question on which that people was divided-the question of slavery. There was no occasion to submit any more; but, whether there was or not,

Every humane society has a system of poor laws What are they? Nothing in the world but this: when a part of the population, from age or disease, or infirmity, is unable to maintain itself, it shall be maintained by the public; and the necessary incident to that is, that as long as the public maintains the pauper, the public shall have the right to the time of the pauper. It is part of the whole system of poor laws everywhere. They give a property in the man, and in the time of the man, as long as he is the subject of public bounty, and properly so. The public is just as inexorably his owner for that time as thèse honorable Senators would represent a slaveholder to be the owner of his property in a slave.

I say, then, it is a mere catch-word, an unfounded dogma, that has no position in law or in sense, to say that there can be no property in man. It is the law of the civilized world everywhere, must be the law, ought to be the law, for the protection and well-being of society. Where you have a population amongst you, as a pauper population always is, unable to feed and to clothe themselves, humanity devolves it upon the public, and devolves with it a property in the time of the subject of the public bounty.

Mr. FESSENDEN. If the Senator will allow me, I should like to explain, with distinctness, what I said in reference to the case of which he speaks.

Mr. MASON. Certainly.

to which the honorable Senator belongs-the State
of Massachusetts-the diary kept by the first
Governor of New England, old John Winthrop,
and a very instructive paper it was, as to the con-
dition of the population in that part of the conti-
nent at that day, and their habits and usages. I
found that when they constituted tribunals of jus-
tice vested with proper jurisdiction over all ques-
tions, civil and criminal, a part of their jurispru-
dence was this: they were not very thoroughly
read, I presume, in the laws of England, or they
had not the books, I do not know which; but they |
had very few laws of their own, and it was the
invariable practice of the tribunals of that early
date, in the administration either of civil or of
criminal justice, where there was no law to direct
their counsels, to refer it to the Bible; and they
took the dispensations of the Mosaic code as
the true arbiter of the rights of their fellow-men
brought before them in their tribunals of justice,
and punished them accordingly.

Now, it is very true that Blackstone, who has
written a history of the common law, adopted
probably as one of the theories of the common
law, that the foundation of all property was de-
rived during the theocracy, when the Almighty
directly governed man without any intermediate
tribunal whatever; and when the Almighty gave
to man dominion over the birds of the air, the
beasts of the field, and the fishes of the sea, that
He there ordained property, and that we must go
Mr. FESSENDEN. I noticed that statement back to that to ascertain what are the rightful sub-
in the papers, and I remarked to the Senator that jects of property. That is his theory. But the
there was no sort of correctness in the statement common law has certainly very far trenched upon
that anybody was sold by virtue of the poor laws that since; because at last property is but subject
of Maine, and I suppose cannot be by the laws to the necessary relations that must subsist be-
of any other State of the Union except in the slave tween men in civilized society. It has grown up
States, where a slave may be sold. The provisionby a series of usages. The common law of Eng-
of our law is very simple, and I presume it is like
that of most other States. The towns are obliged
by law comfortably to support all poor persons
who are unable to take care of themselves. The
general mode of doing this in large towns is to
provide an alms-house, where all the poor people
may be supported at the expense of the municipal
corporation; but some small towns are unable to
do this, and they make a contract with individ-
uals to support the poor-sometimes the whole
poor, sometimes certain numbers of them; and,
in order to arrive at that contract, they have a
bidding to see who will agree with the town to
support its poor at the lowest price. That is all
the auction there is. Those who agree to do it at
a less price than anybody else will, if proper per-
sons, assume the contract, come under certain
obligations to afford these poor people comfortable
subsistence for a fixed price. That is the only
mode in which a person is sold. There is no
contract for his service, no obligation to serve, or
anything of the kind.

While I am up, I wish to say another thing. The Senator from Virginia asked me for the foundation of other property by the common law, and I replied that the answer was to be found in Blackstone, but that I could not give him the exact words. I happen now to have the second volume of Blackstone, and, if he will excuse me for doing so, I will read the words to which I referred; and the Senator will see whether the argument he is making can be sustained upon what Blackstone says is the foundation of the law of property:

"In the beginning of the world, we are informed by Holy Writ, the all-bountiful Creator gave to man' dominion over all the earth, and over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. This is the only true and solid foundation of man's dominion over external things, whatever airy, metaphysical notions may have been started by fanciful writers upon this subject. The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, exclusive of other beings, from the immediate gift of the Creator. And while the earth continued bare of its inhabitants, it is reasonable to suppose that all was in common among them, and that every one took from the public stock, to his own use, such things as his immediate necessities required."-2 Blackstone's Comm., p. 3.

That is the answer to the Senator's whole question, as to what is the true foundation of the law of property, as recognized by the laws of England.

Mr. MASON. I read with a great deal of interest, not very long since, quite an instructive book than was printed in the section of country

land is but the law of usage and of custom. I have
attempted to show, I confess very feebly, that the
common law does recognize a property in some-
thing that is neither a beast of the field, a bird of
the air, nor a fish of the sea, and enforces those
rights of property. I take the case of master and
apprentice; of the servant by indenture; the case
of the poor laws, where the interests of society in
civilization devolve the maintenance of the pauper
on the public. I would take the case of vagrants.
There are laws of general police in most of the
States, (certainly there are in my own, and police
laws are very much the same everywhere,) pro-
viding that men who wander about society with-
out having any visible means of support, shall be
arrested and sold to those who will undertake to
support them for their time. It is a police law;
and the necessity of it is not so much to punish
the vagrant for his vice in idling his time, but for
the great moral example of society to make all
contribute to the common good by the proper em-
ployment of their time.

Now, what is property in a slave at last? If the
slave is killed by his master, it is just as much
murder as if he had killed his neighbor white

man.

If he is maimed by his master, it is just as much a mayhem at common law. If he is inhumanly or cruelly treated, it is just as much an offense as if an apprentice had been so treated, and it is punishable criminally. He cannot kill him; he cannot abuse or misuse him in such a way as to amount to cruelty or ill treatment; but yet, he has a substantial right, and what is it? Trace it as you will, it is at last nothing in the world but the exclusive property in the time and labor of that man so long as he shall live. I can see, so far as the right of property is concerned, no difference whatever between property for life and property for a given term under contract or under law.

How that property arose it is not so easy to determine. The publicists tell us that, at the dawn of civilization, a prisoner of war held his life at the mercy of his captor; and, as the latter might deprive his prisoner of life, it lay at his discretion either to kill him or to keep him in life as his property. Such was certainly the practice in the earlier days of the Romans. History tells us that such has always been, and yet continues, the custom among the negro tribes in Africa. Certainly there the natives sell their own race as slaves; they sell to each other as they sold to the white man, while such sales were allowed by the laws of the white man. Thus it was that the ancestors

SENATE.

of those now held in bondage on this continent brought from Africa with them their condition as property. How it was acquired there can now be a subject of conjecture only, and would be an inquiry as fruitless as vague. The common law recognized them as property, and they were treated and sold as such; the offspring following the condition of the female parent, (a maxim of the common law,) made equally slaves of their descendants.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I will ask the Senator from Virginia to allow me a minute to correct an error that I made a few moments ago. I stated to the Senator that he would find, both in Keble and Salkeld, actions of trover maintained at the common law for a slave. I find that the decision in Salkeld. was not for trover, but for trespass. In Keble, the decision was trover. Here is the old common law statement of the case-it is only five or six lines, and if the Senator will indulge me, I will read it:

"Butts vs. Penny.

"Special verdiet in trover of ten negroes and a half, find them usually bought and sold in India, and if this were sufficient property, or conversion, was the question. And Thomson, on 1 Institutes, 116, for the Defendant, said here could be no property in the plaintiff more than in Villeins; but per Curiam they are by usage tanquam bona, and go to administrator until they become Christians; and thereby they are enfranchised and judgment for the Plaintiff, Nisi, and it lieth of moiety or third part against any stran ger, albeit not against the other copartners."-Keble's Reports, vol. 3, p. 785, Trinity Term, 29 Car. II., B. R.

In Salkeld, the decision was that trespass was the proper remedy; the court making the distinetion that villeinage arose from captivity, and “a man may have trespass quare captivum suum cepit, but cannot have trover de Gallico suo;" he might maintain an action against his Frenchman whom he had taken captive and made a slave, but he could not trover.

"And the court seemed to think that in trespass quare captivum suum cepit, the plaintiff might give evidence that the party was his negro, and he bought him."—Salkeld's Reports, vol. 2, p. 667.

The court sustained the action of trespass. Mr. FESSENDEN. I did not hear whether that was in England or not. It does not say that the purchase or sale was in England.

Mr. SEWARD. What year was that?
Mr. BENJAMIN. In the fourth of Queen
Anne.

"Trover for several things, and among the rest, de uno Ethiope rocat. a negro, and on not guilty pleaded, verdict was for the plaintiff and several damages; and as to the negro 301. And it was moved in arrest of judgment, that trover lays not for a negro, for that the owner had not an absolute property in him; he could not kill him as he could an ox. Contra, it was said property implies the right of hav ing and enjoying and disposing; but it does not always imply a power to destroy; that this power holds in beasts, fowl, and fish, which were made the property of mankind by the act of God, and have a natural existence, but not in things incorporeal, which consist in jure tantum; for this being a property er instituto only, the owner has only a power according to the measure of this instituted right; and it was instanced in the case of a common, a way and a ward. On a ca. sa. the plaintiff has an interest in the body of the prisoner as a pledge not to sell, but to keep, and it goes to the executors."-Salkeld's Reports, vol. 2, p. 667.

This was the argument of counsel. I certainly will not trench on the time of the honorable Senator from Virginia by reading through the argument; but the decision in this case was, that trespass would lie, though trover would not. In the case in Keble, the action was trover, and it was sustained.

Mr. FESSENDEN. It does not appear where The courts afterwards made a distinction on that point.

the action arose.

poses of our argument that trover would lie for Mr. BENJAMIN. It is enough for the pur

a negro on the other side of the water by the com. mon law.

Mr. CLARK. I will ask the Senator from Louisiana if judgment was rendered in the case he has just read? It was held by the court in the first instance that trover would lie; but afterwards, as I understand it, as the case is reported in Levinz, time was taken to consider it, and no judgment was ever rendered.

Mr. BENJAMIN. This a different case. There are two in 3 Salkeld.

Mr. CLARK. I desire to know where the case of Butts against Penny is?

Mr. BENJAMIN. In 3 Keble. Mr. CLARK. Then will the Senator be kind enough to give me the name of the next case?

35TH CONG....1ST SESS.

Kansas-Lecompton Constitution-Mr. Mason.

SENATE.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Smith vs. Gould, 2 Salk- climate, because their constitutions are not adapt- ference in the cases; in the one the people desire eld, 667. to be admitted.

Mr. FESSENDEN. Mr. President

Mr. MASON. If the honorable Senator will allow me to close my remarks, I shall feel obliged to him, as I am not very well. I shall give the Senator the floor very soon.

Mr. FESSENDEŇ. I do not wish to take it at present.

Mr. MASON. I will not trace the condition of slavery as belonging to the African, back to the Bible, because, although I recognize that as the law which to a great extent governs the relations between man and man, yet it is not a law which is to be enforced by any human tribunal. I will not undertake to say that the African got his condition of slavery from jure divino, although it has been so ascribed. It is enough for me that such is the fact. I know of no race of men now upon the earth whose original normal condition was that of slavery, but the African. You find him precisely in the same form of slavery in every land, where he has gone, and at every age of his existence that you find him in now-at home a slave, abroad a slave; and when that slavery of the African is brought within the influences of civilization, we know, upon the experience of our continent at least, that it has elevated him very far beyond the uttermost conceptions of his ancestors in the scale of being. The African upon this continent, in the bondage to which he is subjected here, compared with the African in his own country upon the continent of Africa, might be compared to the difference between a high grade of civilization and the lowest condition of the savage. I will not undertake to say, or even to suggest, what great ends the Supreme Ruler of the world may have designed, and is now executing in the transfer of a portion of the African race to this continent; but I have seen what feeble results have been obtained from the attempt to carry him back to his own continent. There is a philanthropic society now in existence, formed some thirty or forty years ago, originating, I think, with some statesmen of Virginia, intended to deport the African back to his own country. I know that the colony which that society has established has been maintained as a very feeble colony only by the strong arm of civilized power to this day. I know that wherever the African, even after he has been civilized in bondage, has been left to himself, he has lapsed into barbarism and savageism. I cannot, therefore, but entertain a hope that there is some great end to be attained by the Deity who rules over all races, in the subjection of the African to bondage upon this continent, because I know that whilst in bondage he improves in civilization, and when he is freed from bondage, he sinks in the scale of humanity.

Sir, if there are benevolent purposes on the part of those communities represented by honorable Senators here, how are they exercised in the attempt to free the African on this continent? Look at him in their own cities; look at him in any community where you find the African race free. You will see of course individual instances where they have preserved that degree of elevation which they had attained while slaves; but in successive generations they lose it; and the great mass of those who are emancipated, when they are freed from involuntary servitude, or what is the same thing, involuntary labor, decay and die out. All the great incentives that belong to the white race to improve their condition mentally and physically, or to rear and educate their families to advance in civilization, are utterly lost to the African where ever he is found amongst the white race, in freedom, or not subjected to slavery. He will not labor. You cannot make him labor by any of the incentives you can apply to him but the will of a master. That is the condition of the African race on this continent, and everywhere where I know them.

Now, what is proposed? If the African race were left on this continent to the ordinary laws of emigration, do we not know, has not our experience, even in the short time it has been proved here, established it, that the laws of emigration are the laws of nature; that the African in bondige will go into those climates where his labor is nost productive, or which are most congenial to is condition? They cannot exist in a northern NEW SERIES-No. 6.

ed to it by nature; and if they could, their labor would be of so little value, compared with their labor at the South, that they would necessarily not emigrate there. What purpose, then, have honorable Senators, or what purpose have their constituents, in view, in constantly agitating the public mind on the question of African slavery? They say they have wiped their hands of it, when, in truth, the climate alone has extinguished it in their section. They glorify themselves, as Lord Mansfield did in England, that the air of their country is so pure that a slave cannot breathe it; that his shackles fall instantly from his limbs. We envy not their condition, I assure them. Why, then, should they seek to interfere with ours? Whatever of good, or of ill, belongs to the relations that subsist between the two races on this continent is ours, not theirs. The responsibility is with us, not with them. Why is it, then, that whenever opportunity offers, the whole public mind throughout this country is vexed and disturbed and agitated by the question of slavery -not by us, for we are silent; but by those statesmen who are trying to destroy, or to curtail, or to impair it; and always in terms of denunciation? Sir, there is but one reason; and it is exemplified in the very case before us now. It is a resistance to that principle of the Constitution which makes it an element of political power. Take away that, and I warrant you there will be no more clamor on the subject of slavery. It is, then, opposition to a feature of the Constitution; it is opposition to a part of the compact which brought the States together, and to that part of the compact without which the States never could have been brought together.

The people of the Territory of Kansas have come before Congress, asking to be admitted into the Union as a State. All the class of objections which have been made in the nature of technical pleading about the frauds in their elections, and their not submitting the constitution to a popular vote, are but to mask the great battery which is directed against the Constitution of the United States in the representation of African bondsmen. Strike that feature out of the Constitution, and there would be no longer objectants to slavery.

We have then before the American people now a State applying for admission, and entitled to it by all those relations, and by fulfillment of all the requisites which have heretofore governed in the admission of new States, except this one, that there is a recognition of slavery in its constitution; and he must indeed be willingly blind to scenes around him, who does not know that this recognition of slavery alone bars the way to admission. It is the objection taken to it in the review, the very able review, though I think not exactly according to history in many of its facts, of the honorable Senator from New York. It was the point against which were leveled the arguments of the honorable Senator from Vermont. Slavery is the theme, the only theme. Now let us have it frankly avowed. Here are two States applying for admission at the same time; and it is understood that the honorable gentleman who now represents the Committee on Territories is to propose, as a substitute for this bill, one that shall admit both together, the State of Minnesota and the State of Kansas. Are any objections taken to Minnesota? I have heard of none. That comes here as a free State; and, too, with abundance of irregularity in all that has been done in preparing a State government. I challenge gentlemen on the other side now to object to the admission of Minnesota because of the irregularity under which she comes. What has she done? In the first place, she had no convention at all. A law was passed by Congress to take the sense of the people, and provide for a convention to form a constitution for Minnesota; but she has never executed that law, because there never was a convention; but on the contrary, there assembled two bodies, each claiming to be the convention, with power to form a constitution.

Mr. SEWARD. Will the honorable Senator undertake to say, much less to show, that the people of Minnesota, or any majority of the people of Minnesota, or any portion of the people of Minnesota, object to being admitted into the Union under this constitution? That is the dif

Mr. MASON. I would answer the honorable Senator that I am utterly unaware that any portion of the people of the Territory of Kansas object to being admitted into the Union under this constitution. If you listen to popular clamor, to irresponsible mobs, who undertake to regulate government, not by law, but in despite of law, you may say they are unwilling to be admitted; but I answer the Senator as an American statesman, that the only way in which the popular voice should reach him, or can reach me, is through organs of law. I have yet to hear the first voice from Kansas objecting to this constitution. However, that shall not disturb the level of my argument. I want to know whether, when Minnesota comes, as she will come in the same bill for admission with Kansas, we shall hear any objection made as to the irregularity of the proceedings by which her constitution was framed. There was no convention in the first place. The delegates met, and before organization separated into two parts, and remained separate up to the day of adjournment. They finally framed a constitution by a committee. These separate bodies, not claiming to be coördinates, but each claiming to be the convention, by a committee of conference formed a constitution. Some clumsy mode of that sort was adopted. The instrument was afterwards submitted separately to these separate bodies, and taken by them as the constitution. But here is a still greater irregularity, which Kansas certainly has not attempted; the Territory of Minnesota has undertaken to elect two Senators of the United States, who shall be Senators when Minnesota becomes a State, and has undertaken to elect three members of the other House of Congress, who shall be members of the other House provided it shall be found that the law of Congress assigns three members to them. That, it is true, has been done heretofore. It was done in the State of California-contested by us-objected to as irregular and revolutionary; but the objection was overruled by Congress. I do not mean to say, in the case of Minnesota, or the case of California, that the objections were insuperable; because, if we admit the State, and admit the Senators elected before it was a State, our act of admission may be as good in ratification of what is done, as if authorized in the first instance. But I say these irregularities exist, and very great ones they are.

Its proposed that Kansas and Minnesota shall be admitted together. I, for one, gratified as I should be to see the States holding slaves multiplying in this Confederacy as rapidly at least as those not holding slaves, yet seeing the very opposite, and that the great increase is to be on the part of the free States, still am not prepared to cast my vote against the admission of a State because it is a free State. Lask honorable Senators on the other side if they hold the same position before the American people? The Senator from Ohio, [Mr. WADE,] who was questioned on that very point to-day, said it was enough for him to know that a State was a slave State, to deny her admission; and I take it that is the spirit and feeling of honorable Senators on the other side who represent the non-slaveholding States. How then do we stand? What equality have we in this Union? The social condition of the slaveholding States, together with its just and legitimate expansion, must be preserved as necessary both to their honor and to their safety. It cannot be, if the existence of slavery within its borders is enough to preclude its admission as a member of the Federal Union. What do honorable Senators on the other side intend? Do they intend to force the people of the southern States to put an end to this Confederacy? Answer us that. We have the occasion before us now in which almost avowedly you refuse to admit another State because it is a slaveholding State. How far you will succeed I do not know, but that is the purpose. We have been admonished by the honorable Senator from New York that when the time comes which he anticipates when his friends get into power, there shall be no further admission of slave States. That honorable Senator announced in exulting tones, but I think rather in advance of the fact, that the battle had been fought and already won.

Kansas-Lecompton Constitution-Mr. Brown.

The battle, he said, was to give the numerical pre- mon good of the whole, in the administration of ponderance to the free States, because the States which, appropriately done, there would be no inare equally represented on this floor, and that was terference or collision with State authorities: what already attained. That battle is fought and won. would be the result? State after State might come This is a very significant warning. What are to into the Union; they might expand, as they have be the fruits of victory? He shadowed them out done, from thirteen to thirty-one and to sixty-one to some extent. One branch of the Government, and to one hundred and one; and they would all the judiciary, stands in his path, or in the way of revolve as harmoniously around their common his party. That branch is to be reorganized, re- orbit, the Federal Government, as did the original constructed, or, as the honorable Senator explains thirteen; susceptible of expansion to any extent, it now, popularized. I would say to that honor- and stronger as they expanded. And as if to anable Senator, though in no exulting tones, how-ticipate such expansion in the advancement of the ever, that so far as I can read the public mind of arts of civilized life, the telegraphs and railroads this country, the battle is not fought, far less is it of modern construction lend their powerful aid to bind them together by agencies that annihilate time and space.