San Andreas independent., 1858-08-28
Power Of Penalties and Inducements.

pions the use of hair-splitting distractions, in
order to claim identity with truth, is not only
eighteen hundred years from Christ" but
ten thousand miles from home More partic-
nlariy is this apparent when these distractions
are OF an arbitrary nature When men de-
mand as right, what they hope to receive as
faUor, their own pleadings betray both their
pride and distress.
Such. in my opinion, is the present +" fix"
of the Lecompton party of our State. They
can find no precedent for the efforts of the
Administration in its attempts to subjugate
Kansas; in fact they acknowledge it was
wrong yet, the same breath that acknowled-
ges error, with heartless and unconscicnable
subtcrfuge, endeavors to construe it into JUS
tice. Their inexplicable hallucinations seem
to be the begotton of much compensation and
little principle. Meanly possessing the men,
tai strength to make "the worse appear the
better reason" they employ vociferation in
! stead of argument to fill up the hour, thereby
insulting the intelligence of the people
They, who themselves, like Jim Grow, "wheel
about and turn about and do just so," use the
greatest efforts to convince the working man
that whatever proceeds from their mouths,
emanates from respectable authority. But
how and on what grounds do we differ?-
They tell us that the Lecompton difficulty is
amicably adjusted, and that the Administra-
tiOn and Senator Donoloe orea fo a cl,ar,,,
We do not believe it. Senator Douglas, in
his Chicago speech of July 9th, says l re-
gard that Lecompton battle as having been
fought and the victory won. Now who won,
and who had to cave? Mr.. Douglas comedies
point in this so-callcd settlement but not
principle. He says, in reference to the Eng
lish Bill, ri did not consider the mode of
submission fair, for the reason that any elec-
tion is a mockery which is not free any elec-
ton is a fraud upon the rights of the people,
which holds out inducements for affirmative
votes, and penalties for negativy votes but,
while l was not satisfied with the mode of
submission, while resisted that mode to the
last, demanding fair, a just, free mode of
submission, still when the law was passed it
has placed it within the power of the people
of Kansas, at that election, to reject the Le-
compton Constitution, and then make out
another in harmony with their opinions aud
their principles instead. do not believe that
either the penalties on the one hand or the in
ducements on the other, are going te force
that people to accept constitution to which
they are irreconcilably opposed"
1t seems, does it not, from the above, that
there are penalties and inducements If they ac-
cept the Lecompton Constitution, they can
come into the Union with $4,000 inhabitants
but if they reject it and make another Const-
tuition, they cannot enter the Union until they
have 93,420 inhabitants. Now, in the name
of departed sages who have left the field of
their glorious achievements to rest in the ST.
lent tomb, is this Democracy The Demo-
cratic principle of sef-govcrnment, incorpo-
rated into the Nebraska bill, introduced by
Stephen A. Douglas, in 1854, declaring it "to
be the true intent and meaning of this act,
w 'SS SiS~sS AhIO Guy ACliitOlJ VI Otdlt,
nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the
people thereof perfectly free to form and reg
nlate their own domestic institutions in their
own way" has been regarded as one of the
cardinal principles of the Democratic party
for the last FIVE years. Incorporated into the
platform of the party, by the Cincinnati Con-
vention that nominated James Buchanan for
the Presidency, it became living issue be-
tween that party and whoever opposed it. 1t
recommended itself to the enlightened con-
servative sentiment o6 the country at large,
in the election of James Buchanan to the
Chief Magistracy of the Union. Stephen A.
Douglas, then as now, was the bold and fear
less exponent of that doctrine of " Popular
Sovereignty, retaining still the manly and hon
est policy he advocated four years ago in the
Senate of the United States, and during the
political campaign of 1856. He reiterates in
his Chicago speech, that he I" would vindicate
that principle-the right of the people to form
their own institutions, to establish free States
or slave States, as they choose, and that that
principle should never be abused either by
fraud or violence, or by circumvention, or by
any other means, if it was in his power to
preventit"
Yet in the face of all this, these whippers-
in try to preach a sort of political Unitarian
ism between Douglas and Buchanan, difficult
to be understood. They tell us that the Eng
lish Bill has conclusively settled the whole
matter, whereas it is known that Douglas
characterizes that bill as a fraud and a swim
dle"
We have charity enough to believe that
these men hazard their reputation for con-
sideration, and are free from the double dis
grace of attempting to confirm in private con-
versation, what they preach in public.
ANTI LECoMPToN DEMOCRAT.
A DuEL.-Senator w. I. Ferguson and Geo.
d., Tohnetoo foprbf ducl pooI island