voluble in proclamations to that end.  The trainers of the Constitution, aware of its invalidity without the sanction of the people, provided for its submission to “approval” or “disapproval,” to “ratification” or “rejection”; and yet, by the paltriest juggle in recorded history, devised, in the same breath, a method of taking the vote, which completely nullified its own terms.  No man was allowed to “disapprove” it, no man was allowed to “reject” it,—­except in regard to a single section,—­and before he could vote for or against that, he was obliged to vote in favor of all the rest.  If there had been a hundred thousand voters in the Territory opposed to the Constitution, and but one voter in its favor, the hundred thousand voters could not have voted upon it at all, but the one voter could,—­and the vote of that one would have been construed into a popular approval, while the will of all the others would have been practically void.  By this pitiful stratagem, it was supposed, the double exigency of Mr. Buchanan’s often repeated sentiments, and of the pro-slavery cause, which dreaded a popular vote, was completely satisfied; and the President of the United States, reckless of his position and his fame, lent himself to the shameless and despicable palter.  He not only lent himself to it, but he has openly argued its propriety, and is now making the adherence of his friends to such baseness the test of their party fidelity.  In the name of Democracy,—­of that sacred and sublime principle into which we, as a nation, have been baptized,—­which declares the inalienable rights of man,—­and which, as it makes the tour of the earth, hand and hand with Christianity, is lifting the many from the dust, where for ages they have been trampled, into political life and dignity,—­he converts a paltry swindle into its standard and creed, and prostitutes its glorious mission, as a redeeming influence among men, into a ministry of slavery and outrage.

Mr. Buchanan knows—­we believe better than any man in the country—­that the Lecompton Constitution is not the act of the people of Kansas.  By the election of the 4th of January—­an election which was perfectly valid, because it was held under the authority of a Territorial Legislature superior to the Convention—­it was solemnly and unequivocally condemned.  This of itself was enough to demonstrate that fact.  But all the Democratic Governors of the Territory—­with the single exception of Shannon, and the recently appointed acting Governor, Denver, who is prudently silent—­testify urgently to the same truth.  Reeder, Geary, and Walker, together with the late acting Governor, Stanton, asseverate, in the most earnest and emphatic manner, that the majority in Kansas is for making it a Free State,—­that the minority which has ruled is a factious minority, and that they have obtained and perpetuated their ascendency by a most unblushing series of crimes and frauds.  Yet, in the teeth of this evidence,—­of repeated elections,—­of his own witnesses turning against him,—­the President adheres to the infamous plans of the pro-slavery leaders; and, if not arrested by the rebukes of the North, he will insist on imposing their odious measures upon their long-suffering victims.