diably, the people are not allowed to pronounce upon. They are not allowed to pronounce upon the thousand-and-one details of the State organization; they are fobbed off with a transparent cheat of "heads I win,—tails you lose";—and the whole game is denominated, Popular Sovereignty.
What is worse, the President of the United States argues that this would be a fair settlement of the question, and that in the exercise of such a choice, the glorious doctrine of Popular Sovereignty is amply applied and vindicated. He admits that "the correct principle," as in the case of Minnesota, is to refer the Constitution "to the approval and ratification of the people"; he admits that the only mode in which the will of the people can be "authentically ascertained is by a direct vote"; he admits that the "friends and supporters of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, when struggling to sustain its provisions before the great tribunal of the American people," "everywhere, throughout the Union, publicly pledged their faith and honor" to submit the question of their domestic institutions "to the decision of the bonâ-fide people of Kansas, without any qualification or restriction whatever"; but then,—and here is the subterfuge,—"domestic institutions" means only the single institution of slavery; and the Convention, in consenting to yield that (and this only in appearance) to the arbitrament of the people, has fully satisfied all the demands of the principle of Popular Sovereignty! Their other questions are all "political"; the questions as to the organization of their executive, legislative, and judicial departments, as to their elective franchise, their distribution of districts, their banks, their rates and modes of taxation, etc., etc., are not domestic questions, but political; and provided the people are suffered to vote on the future (not the existing) condition of slaves, faith has been sufficiently kept. Popular Sovereignty means "pertaining to negroes,"—not the negroes already in the Territory, but those who may be hereafter introduced; for the monopoly of that branch of trade and merchandise, which is already established, and the future growth and increase of it, must not be interfered with, even by Popular Sovereignty, because that would be "an act of gross injustice." In other words, Popular Sovereignty is merely designed to cover the right of the people to vote on a single question, specially presented by an illegal body, under electoral arrangements made by its new officers,—which officers not only receive, but count the votes, and make the returns,—while all the rest is merely unimportant and trivial. It is just the sort of sovereignty for which Louis Napoleon provided when he wished to procure a popular sanction for the numberless atrocities of the coup-d'état of the 2d December.
An old authority tells us that "it is hard to kick against the pricks"; and the President appears to have experienced the difficulty, in kicking against the pricks of his conscience. He had committed himself to a principle which he is now compelled by the policy of his Southern masters to evade, and is painfully embarrassed as to how he shall hide his tracks. He knows, as all the world knows, that this jugglery in Kansas has been performed for no other purpose than to secure a foothold for Slavery there, against the demonstrated opinion of nine-tenths of the people; he knows, as all the world knows, that if the Convention had had the least desire to arrive at a fair expression of the popular will, on the question of Slavery or any other question, it was easy to make a candid and honorable submission of it to an election to be held honestly under the recognized officers of the Territory; but he knows, also, that under such circumstances the case would have been carried overwhelmingly against the "domestic institution," and thus have rebuked, with all the emphasis that an outraged community could give to the expression of its will, the nefarious conduct which "the party" has pursued from the beginning,—and this was a consummation not to be wished. He there-
