St. Charles City Republican intelligencer. [volume] (St. Charles City [Charles City], Iowa) 1857-1861, 1858-03-04
poIititaI.
SPEECH OF HON. JAMES HARLAN

the speech Of Hon. James Harlan, in
the U. S. Senate, January 25th, 1858,
upon the Lecompton Constitution
The people of Kansas have been
compelled to submit to laws which
they never made, and to officers whom
they never elected. This grinding
tyranny has been open, continuous,
unmitigated, and unblushing, from
the commencement to the present.
The Lecompton outrage is no more
hagrant than those by which it was
proceeded. The last crop of fruit is no
more bitter than the first. If the latter
must be treated as void ob initio, in
consequence of these terrible politica
wrongs, why not the first? Ii the LIE
compton Constitution may be set aside
on this account, why not the whole
body of the Kansas laws?
| agree with the Senator from ILL
nois and the Northern Democracy,
that this Constitution should be re-
pudiated by Congress but regret
that this is not asked on the true
ground-the constitutional duty of
Congress to make all ncedful rules
and regulations for the Territories ::
because it places the Northern De-
mocracy in an attitude of humiliation
The whole burden of their complaint
against the President and his Southern
supporters is the refusal to submit the
Lecompton Constitution to a vote of
the people. Had this been done, we
are told that the Democracy, North
and South, would have been a unit.
And the President is admonished,
in threatening language, that if the
harmony of the party is to be destroy
ed by refusal to carry out his own
instructions and pledges of the leaders
of the party, let the responsibility be
on his own head.
But what is the extent Of the boon
attempted to be wrested from the un-
willing hand Of the President, for the
people Of Kansas, by the Northern
Democracy! A Negative right only !,
The right to withhold their assent to
constitutions and laws! The naked
right of denial At the polls, the
people can. do nothing more. They
cannot there deliberate, modify, and
mature measures of policy.
1t is not bold and manly contest,
like that of the Commoners of England
with the Crown, for constitutional
liberty but contest with the Presi-
dent and his supporters, for the power
to veto laws enacted by usurpers and
tyrants. By their arguments we are
carried back thousands of years in the
history of free Governments, to the
period when the plebeian orders en-
gagged in a similar contest with those
Of senatorial rank, in imperial Rome
In that contest, the plebeians did in
deed achieve great triumph when
they acquired the right, in the person
OF their tribunes, to sit at the feet ot
Senators, and write "veto" on Roman
laws. This was certainly one step
towards their emancipation. But does
this, in the opinion of the Northern
Democracy, fill the whole measure oi
the liberty of American freemen? tc
choose between the law proposed and
no law? to decide between the Consti
tuition submitted and no Constitution
l had supposed that in this country
the people possessed the right, in the
persons of their representatives tc
march boldly into the Senate Chamber
itself, and there take seats side by
side with the Ciceros and Caesars Of
that assembly; that they had the
right not only to object to the pas
sage of bad law, but had the right to
boldly step forward and make their
own laws. Yet the whole Northern
Democracy, led on by the honorable
Senator from Illinois, the honorable
Senator from Michigan, and others
stand here begging the President anG
Congress to allow the people of Kan
sas to veto a constitution dictated t.
her-not the right by their legally
constituted delegates, fairly elected
to make q Constitution.
Here, then, the Democracy and tht
Republicans differ. II you have
clothed the people of Kansas will
power to make all proper laws on al
needful subjects Of Legislation, l fo1
ono claim that they shall have thu
fright to make them-not a nakee