Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/810

 our republican system, imperatively demand that the voice of the people shall be fairly expressed, and their will embodied in that fundamental law, without fraud or violence, or intimidation, or any other improper or unlawful influence, and subject to no other restrictions than those imposed by the constitution of the United States."

The voice of the people fairly expressed, and its embodiment in the fundamental law, should be the earnest desire of every citizen of a republic.

But how can the voice of a people be fairly expressed, and their will be embodied in the organic law, unless that law, when made, be submitted to them to determine whether it is their will which the convention has proclaimed?

The leading idea and fundamental principle of our organic act, as expressed in the law itself, was to leave the actual bona fide inhabitants of the territory "perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." The act confers almost unlimited power upon the people, and the only restriction imposed upon its exercise is the constitution of the United States.

The great principle, then, upon which our free institutions rest, is the unqualified and absolute sovereignty of the people, and constituting, as that principle does, the most positive and essential feature in the great charter of our liberties, so it is better calculated than any other to give elevation to our hopes and dignity to our actions. So long as the people feel that the power to alter the form or change the character of the government abides in them, so long will they be impressed with the sense of security and dignity which must ever spring from the consciousness that they hold within their own hands a remedy for every political evil—a corrective for every governmental abuse and usurpation.

"This principle must be upheld and maintained, at all hazards and at every sacrifice—maintained in all the power and fulness—in all the breadth and depth of its utmost capacity and signification. It is not sufficient that it be acknowledged as a mere abstraction, or theory, or doctrine; but as a practical, sub • stantial, living reality, vital in every part."

The idea of surrendering the sovereignty of the territories, the common property of the people of the several states, into the hands of the few who first chanced to wander into them, is, to me, a political novelty. Is it just that the territories should exercise the rights of sovereign states until their condition and numbers become such as to entitle them to be admitted into the Union on an equality with the original states?

In speaking of the proper construction of the organic act, its distinguished author remarks: "The act recognizes the rights of the people thereof, while a territory, to form and regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United States, and to be received into the Union, as soon as they should attain the requisite number of inhabitants, on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever."

In the report before alluded to, the author says: "The point upon which your committee have entertained the most serious and grave doubts in regard to the propriety of indorsing this proposition, relates to the fact that, in the