now,—the field on which a great battle for the right is to be fought. Honor or infamy attends the issue of her action in the dilemma in which the crafty malice of her enemies has placed her. If she agree to take the dirty acres which are proffered to her as the price of her integrity, she consents to take the yoke of Slavery upon her neck and not even to attempt to shake herself free from it for six years to come. We know that shuffling Democrats, and even temporizing Republicans, represent that the people, after accepting the Lecompton Constitution, can forthwith summon a Convention and substitute another scheme of government in its stead. But this could be initiated only by a breach of the promise they would have just pledged, and could be carried through only by a revolution. Such a course would be a direct violation of the philosophy of Constitutional Government, which assumes as its fundamental axiom, that Constitutions can be altered only in the way and according to the conditions prescribed in themselves. Such a proceeding would be a coup d'état, not as flagitious certainly as that of Bonaparte, but to the full as revolutionary and illegal. And we may be sure that the arm of the United States Government would not be shortened so that it should not interpose and hinder such a defiance of itself and the Power whose instrument it is. With servile and corrupt judges at its beck and a majority in Congress within its purchase, the occasion and means of such an interference would be readily devised and supplied.
We believe that this line of policy would lead to an armed collision with the General Government. It is for the oppressed inhabitants of any country to say when their wrongs have reached the height which justifies the drawing of the civil sword. We have neither the right nor the disposition to advise the people of Kansas in a matter so emphatically their own. But there is another way of coming to this arbitrament,—inevitable, if they deviate a hair's-breadth from the strict line of law,—should they deem there is no other remedy for their wrongs. The admirable Constitution just framed at Leavenworth, one well worthy of a free people that has been tried as with fire, will be adopted before these lines are before the public eye. Let them reject the Buchanan-English swindle, put their heel on the Lecompton fraud, set up the Leavenworth Constitution, and erect a State government under it in defiance of the Territorial Usurpation, and they will soon find themselves face to face with the tyranny at Washington. But is there not reason to hope that firmness and patience may yet win the battle for freedom without resorting to so serious an alternative? Is it indeed inevitable that Kansas must remain out of the pale of the Union, under the oppression of the Territorial laws, until the hirelings of the Government shall have determined that slaves enough have been poured in to decide the complexion of the new State, and shall authorize her to ask for admission? We are told that the joy at Washington and elsewhere over this "settlement" of the Kansas difficulty was because it was taken out of Congress, and "Agitation" at an end. But what is to hinder its being brought into Congress again?—and whose fault will it be, if Agitation do not survive and grow mightier unto the victory? If the present Congress can shut its doors against this intruder, its power dies with itself, and it greatly lies with the people of Kansas to make the next Congress one that shall rehabilitate them in their rights. Their conduct at this pregnant moment may settle the proximate destiny of the Republic, and decide whether the Slave Power is to rule us by its underlings for four years more, or whether its pride is to have a fall and its insolence a rebuke in 1860.
We all remember how often the Agitation of the Slavery question has been done to death in Congress, and how sure it was to appear again to startle its murderers from their propriety. Like "the blood-boltered Banquo," it would confront again the eyes that had hoped to
