Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/290

Rh in the county gaol not less than six months, or a fine of $500 (Ch. xlviii. Sect. 43).

13.—"No person who is oonsoientionBly opposed to holding slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in this territory, shall sit as a juror on the trial of any prosecntions for any violation of any of the sections of this Act." That law excludes the New Testament and the Old Testament, as well as the Declaration of Independence, and the works of Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison : it shuts humanity from the jury-box.

IV. The next step was to get a pro-Slavery delegate from Kansas into the House of Representatives at Washington. So, on the 1st of October, 1855, the day appointed by the Border-Ruffian Legislature to elect a delegate, a fifth invasion was made by outsiders from Missouri, who, as before, took possession of the polls, and chose Hon. J. W. Whitfield to that oflSce. Mr. Shannon, the new and appropriate Governor of the territory, gave him a certificate of lawful election. He is now at Washington in that capacity. But the House of Representatives has the matter under advisement; a committee has gone to Kansas to investigate the matter; and the country waits, anxious, for the results.

V. The only remaining step is to enforce their slave-law, and then Kansas becomes a slave State. But this is a difficult matter: for the people of the territory, indignant at this invasion of their rights, long since repudiated the legislature of ruffians ; held a convention at Topeka; formed a constitution, which was submitted to the people, and accepted by them. They have chosen their own legislature. State officers, senators, and representatives, and applied for admission into the Union as a free State. But men, who have already five times invaded the territory, threaten to go there again, and enforce the laws which they have already made. I need only refer to the conduct of the President, and his masters in the cabinet, and say that he has been uniformly on the side of this illegal violence. You remember his Message last winter, his Proclamation at a later day, his conduct all the time. He encourages the violence of these tools of the slave power, who have sought to tread