coupled with the duty of guarding and protecting the owner in his rights.
Thus we are obliged to lower the standard of popular sovereignty still another degree, in order to reach Douglas's great principle. [Laughter.] It does not even consist in the right of the people to tease slavery out of a Territory: it consists in the power of a Territorial Legislature, coupled with the duty to pass acts for the protection of slavery, but by no means against it. The assumed power to pass unfriendly laws seems to be changed into the duty to pass friendly laws. I call this popular sovereignty with a vengeance! It is like mock-turtle soup—there is mock enough, but not a particle of turtle. [Applause and laughter.]
It is true, Judge Douglas was in the habit of quibbling a little about the meaning of the Dred Scott decision; but the Wickliffe resolution, adopted by his friends at Baltimore, has helped him over his difficulties. It is to the following effect:
“Resolved, That it is in accordance with the true interpretation of the Cincinnati platform, that, during the existence of a Territorial Government, the measure of restriction, whatever it may be, imposed by the Federal Constitution, on the powers of the Territorial Legislatures, over the subject of domestic relations, as the same has been or may hereafter be finally determined by the Supreme Court of the United States, shall be respected by good citizens, and enforced with promptness and fidelity by every branch of the Federal Government.”
To all of which, Judge Douglas, in his letter of acceptance, most graciously assents.
We hear no longer of the “rights of the people of the Territories to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way,” but now, “of the measure of restriction imposed upon the Territorial Legislatures
