tion is exercised by a monarch or a class, and in the other by the body of the citizens. This distinctive feature of our politics, as opposed to all others, regards the will of the people, directly or indirectly expressed, as alone giving validity to law; our National Constitution, and every one of our thirty-one State Constitutions, proceeds upon that principle; every act of legislation in the Congress and the State Assemblies supposes it; and every decision of every Court has that for its basis. Constitutions have been adopted, undoubtedly, without a distinct submission of them to the ratification of the people; but in such cases there has been no serious agitation of the public mind, no important conflict or division of opinion, rendering such ratification necessary,—and, in the absence of dispute, the general assent of the community to the action of its delegates might fairly be presumed. But in no case, in which great and debatable questions were involved, has any Convention dared to close its labors without providing for their reference to the popular sanction; much less has there been any instance in which a Convention has dared to make own work final, in the face of a known or apprehended repugnance of the constituency. The politicians who should have proposed such a thing would have been overwhelmed with unmeasured indignation and scorn. No sentiment more livingly pervades our national mind, no sentiment is juster in itself, than that they who are to live under the laws ought to decide on the character of the laws, — that they whose persons, property, welfare, happiness, life, are to be controlled by a Constitution of Government, ought to participate in the formation of that government.
Conscious of this truth, and of its profound hold on the popular heart, Mr. Buchanan instructed Governor Walker to see the Kansas Constitution submitted to the people, — to protect them against fraud and violence in voting upon it, — and to proclaim, in the event of any interference with their rights, that the Constitution “would be and ought to be rejected by Congress.” Walker was voluble in proclamations to that end. The framers of the Constitution, aware of its invalidity without the sanction of the people, provided for its submission to “approval” or “disapproval,” to “ratification” or “rejection”; and yet, by the paltriest juggle in recorded history, devised, in the same breath, a method of taking the vote, which completely nullified its own terms. No man was allowed to “disapprove” it, no man was allowed to “reject” it, — except in regard to a single section, — and before he could vote for or against that, he was obliged to vote in favor of all the rest. If there had been a hundred thousand voters in the Territory opposed to the Constitution, and but one voter in its favor, the hundred thousand voters could not have voted upon it at all, but the one voter could, — and the vote of that one would have been construed into a popular approval, while the will of all the others would have been practically void. By this pitiful stratagem, it was supposed, the double exigency of Mr. Buchanan’s often repeated sentiments, and of the pro-slavery cause, which dreaded a popular vote, was completely satisfied; and the President of the United States, reckless of his position and his fame, lent himself to the shameless and despicable palter. He not only lent himself to it, but he has openly argued its propriety, and is now making the adherence of his friends to such baseness the test of their party fidelity. In the name of Democracy, — of that sacred and sublime principle into which we, as a nation, have been baptized, — which declares the inalienable rights of man, — and which, as it makes the tour of the earth, hand and hand with Christianity, is lifting the many from the dust, where for ages they have been trampled, into political life and dignity, — he converts a paltry swindle into its standard and creed, and prostitutes its glorious mission, as a redeeming influence among men, into a ministry of slavery and outrage.
