was demanded at their hands, were sincere in the resistance they opposed to this subversion of all the principles in which they had been bred, and of which their party had always professed to be the special defence and guard. But the mantle of our charity is not wide enough to cover up the base treachery of those men who, acknowledging and demonstrating the right, devised or consented to the villany which was to crush or to cripple it. That the final shape which the Lecompton juggle took was an invention of the enemy, cunningly contrived to win by indirection what was too dangerous to be attempted by open violence, is a conclusion from which no candid mind can escape, after a full consideration of the case. The defection of so large a body of Northern Democrats from the side of the Slaveholding Directory was doubtless a significant and startling fact, suggestive of dangerous insubordination on the part of allies who had ever been found sure and steadfast in every jeopardy of Slavery. And it made a resort to guile necessary to carry the point which it was not prudent to press to the extremity of force. The Slaveholders are not fastidious as to the means by which they reach their end. Though they might have preferred to hew their way to their design with a high hand, and to put down all opposition by bought or bullied majorities, backed by the strong arm of the nation, yet they never refuse to compromise and palter when the path to success lies through stratagems or frauds. The skill in this instance, as in all others, by which they propose to win everything under the show of yielding somewhat, is worthy of Machiavel or of Lucifer, and is far above the capacity of the paltry Northern tool who is permitted to enjoy the infamy of the invention which he was employed to utter. The Slaveholders, like other despots, do their dirty work by proxy, and scorn the wretched instruments they use, and then fling from them in disgust.
The Lecompton cheat having been defeated in the House after it had received the indorsement of the Senate, the two coördinates were at issue, and it seemed for a brief time to have met with the fate it merited. But cunning and treachery combined to put it into the hands of a Committee of Conference to be manipulated afresh, and, if possible, moulded into a shape that might give Democratic recusants an excuse for treason to the North and submission to the Power that demanded it. And the invention was worthy of the diabolical sagacity and ingenuity which have always marked the politics of Slavery. The maxim, that every man has his price, was assumed to apply as well to men when collected into bodies corporate as to individuals; and the hook, with which the souls of the men of Kansas are to be fished for, was baited with a bribe the most tempting to their hungry needs. And to make their capture the more sure, an answering menace threatens them on the other hand, to force them to swallow the barbed treachery. They are offered no opportunity of expressing their assent or dissent as to the Constitution held over their heads. Their enemies know too well what its fate would be, if offered, pure and simple, to their acceptance or refusal. They are only to say whether or not they will accept five million acres of land that Congress munificently offers them for the construction of their railways. If they say, "Yes, thank you," to this simple question, the Chief Conjurer of the nation, the great Medicine Man of our tribe, the Head Magician of our Egypt, will only have to say, "Presto pass," and they will find themselves a Slave State in the glorious Union, under a solemn contract, struck by this same act, to endure Slavery for six years to come. If they say, "No, we won't," the door of the Union is shut in their faces, and they are told to wait without in all the bleakness of Territorial dependency, subject to the laws now afflicting them, with a satrap sent down from Washington to rule over them, and with Lecomptes and Catos to decree justice for them, until swindling
