The Kansas herald of freedom., 1855-06-23
1amp Newspaper nmanp
Subjects for the Consideration of the

Subjects for the Consideration of the
Legislature of Kansas.
In the Dispatched last week, we find
some subjects suggested for tleconsider-
alton Of the first Kansas Legislature.
We Intend TO make few quotations
from that article, and then make such re-
marks concerning them, as We think
their merit demand. He says:
"Color viii be declared prinaa facie eV-
idence of slavery, and the most positive
proofs to the contrary viii be required,
shareholders only to be competent jury
men,"
We must confess that we cannot exact
" see how the principles of Squatter
Sovereignty are to be reeonciled with the
declaration that Shareholders only to be
competent jurymen." This jury quail
fcation is a new feature in these latter
days of Young America. A property
qualification, either as juryman or vo-
ter, has been kicked out of the country
as an offensive relict of Old Fogyism.-
IL mans life, his liberty or his proper
ty is in jeopardy, he has the right to
have justice administered to him by ju-
ry of his equals; equals in rights-in IL
ability to the LAWN station and equal
y interested in the operation of the laws.
We can't, for the life of US, see how the
pecketing of a bill of sale of stump of
a darkey would metamorphose an incom-
petent man into competent one.
Again. he recommends
"a law so far modifying the laws of
slayeholding States, as oalegalize slave
testimony in all trials for offences against
the foregoing law"
Now we would regard a law, passed in
conformity to the. above suggestion as not
only unfortunate, batabsoIutely danger
Gus to the Liberties of the 6re-eaters and
abolitionists both. A law permitting a
negro to testify against white man,
would be an instrument which might cut
both ways, for 1t might hang an Atcbi-
son and Sumner Stringfellew and a
Thayer on the same gallows for tamper-
ing with slaves. Negroes are known to
be degraded raee-thcir color and their
genealogy mark them out--stamp them
with the black seal of inferiority,-so
much so that the laws of Missouri will
not let a man, who has more than one
sixteenth partof negro blood in his veins,
give evidence against her citizens. This
is right, it is. the law of most of the
slayeholding States, and we are aston
ished at any respectable pro-slavery jour
nal advocating any modification of it,
which would give the negro the right to
give evidence against white man.
@ We clip the above from the Oc-
cidental Messenger, published at Inde-
pendence, Mo. Our readers can readily
observe from the extract which it makes
from the Western Dispatch. published at
the same place, what the people of Kan
sas are invited to. s'Color to be declar-
ed prinsa .facie evidence of slavery
"SlaUeholders only to be competent iu-
rymen." 8: Slaves ODE admitted as wit
nesses against those who are charged
with advising them to escape, &c"
Adopt that programme and where is
there penitentiary large enough to hold
the conyicts under that law.
The President viii be called upon to
convene an extra session of Congress to
take action on the organic law of the
Territory, if slaveholding rabble from
Missouri is to adopt laws to govern us
more fanatical in their nature than the
widest notions of the French revolution