We say, to force the evils of slavery upon an unwilling people,—­because such has been and is the only end of this protracted endeavor.  The authors of the scheme have scarcely shown the ordinary cunning of rogues, which conceals its ulterior purposes.  Disdaining the advice of Mrs. Peachum to her daughter Polly, to be “somewhat nice” in her deviations from virtue, they have advanced bravely and flagrantly to their nefarious object.  They have been reckless, defiant, aggressive; but, unfortunately for them, they have not been sagacious.  The thin disguise of principle under which they masked their designs at the outset—­as it were a bit of oiled paper—­was soon torn away; the plot betrayed its inherent wickedness from step to step; the instruments selected to execute it have one after another abandoned the task, as quite impracticable for any honest mortal; and now these whilom advocates of “Popular Sovereignty” stand exposed to the scorn and derision of the country, as nothing less than what their opponents all along declared them to be,—­the sworn champions of Slavery-Extension.  All the movements and changes of their external policy find their explication in the single phrase, the actual and the political advancement of the interests of Slavery.

It is humiliating to an American citizen to cast his eyes back, even for a moment, to the history of this Kansas plot,—­humiliating in many ways; but in none more so than in the revelation it makes of the depth and extent of party-servility in the Northern mind.  Throughout the proceedings of the “Democracy” towards the unhappy settlers of Kansas, it is difficult to place the finger on a single act of large, just, or generous policy; every step in it appears to have developed some new outrage or some new fraud; and yet, every step in it has also elicited new shouts of approval from the echoing lieges and bondmen of “the Party.”  We should willingly, therefore, turn away from the theme, but that we believe the end is not yet come; a review of its past may instruct us as to its future.  For it is not always true, as Coleridge says, that experience, like the stern-lights of a ship, illuminates only the track it has left; the lights may be hung upon the bows, and the spectator be enabled to discern, by means of them, no less, the way in which it is going.

A “Territory,” viewed in connection with the political system of the United States, must be confessed to be a somewhat erratic and embarrassing member.  Few or no specific provisions are made for it in the Organic Law, which applies primarily, and quite exclusively, to “States.”  The word is mentioned there but once,—­in the clause empowering Congress to “make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States,”—­and here it occurs in a somewhat doubtful sense.  Judging by the mere letter or obvious import of the Constitution, the right of acquiring and governing territory would