the statements of Governor Walker and myself, that they would probably be admitted, elected delegates and sent them up to the Convention; but they were not admitted to seats.” In consequence of this failure or refusal to do their duty, only the geographical half or the numerical fourth of the Territory was represented in the Convention. Nor is it any excuse for the defaulting officers, even if it had been true, that some of the people opposed the execution of their duty. They professed to be acting under law; their functions were plainly prescribed to them; and they were bound to make the census and registry, whatever the disposition of the people. In a land of laws, it is the law, and not any mere prevailing sentiment, which prescribes and limits official duty. There is, however, no evidence that the discharge of their task was rendered impossible by the popular opposition, while there is evidence that they were very willing to neglect it, and very willing to allow any obstacle, no matter how trivial, to obstruct their performance of it. They were, in truth, as everybody knows, the simple tools of the faction which started this Convention movement, and not at all desirous to secure a fair and adequate representation of the inhabitants.
That many of the people should be careless of the registration, and even unfriendly to it, is natural, because they disapproved the plan, and were hostile to the ends of the Convention. They doubted the authority by which it had been summoned; they doubted both the validity and the probable fairness of an election under such authority; and, moreover, they were indifferent as to its proceedings, because they had been assured that they would be called upon to pronounce pro or con upon its results. The Convention, as actually constituted when assembled, consisted of sixty delegates, representing about 1,800 voters, in an electoral body of 12,000 in all, — or one delegate to thirty voters! A convention so composed ought to have been ashamed of the very pretence of acting in the name of the whole people. It would have been ashamed of it, if it had contained men sincerely anxious to reflect the will of the great body of the citizens. It would have been as much ashamed of it, as any honest man would be to pass himself off as the agent of a person whom he had never known, or who openly derided and despised him. But this precious body—each man of whom represented thirty men besides himself, in a voting population of 12,000—was not sensible to such considerations. By a miserable chicane, it had got into a position to do mischief, and it proceeded to do it, with as much alacrity and headlong zeal as rogues are apt to exhibit when the prize is great and the opportunity short. An election for the Legislature, held subsequently to that for the Convention, showing a public opinion decidedly adverse to it, the sole study of its members thenceforth seemed to be, how they could most adroitly and effectively nullify the ascendency of the majority. For this end alone they consulted, and caballed, and calculated, and junketed; and the Lecompton Constitution, with the Schedule annexed, was the worthy fruit of their labors.
It is monstrous in Mr. Buchanan to assume that a body so contrived and so acting expressed in any sense the sovereign will of the people. But, not to dwell upon this point, let us suppose that the Convention had been summoned by a competent authority, that it had been fairly chosen by its small constituency, and that its proceedings had been managed with ordinary decorum, — would the Constitution it framed be valid, in the face of a clear popular condemnation? We hold that it would not, because, in our estimation, and in the estimation of every intelligent American, the very essence of republicanism is “the consent of the governed.” It is the highest function of political sovereignty to devise and ordain the organic law of society, the vital form of its being; and the characteristic difference between the despotic or oligarchical and the republican government is, that in the one case the func-
