Arkansas true Democrat., 1859-11-23

asseted by him in the following fashion:
 "Slaves according to that decision. (tb Dred Scott decision, being property, stan,
 on an equat .footing cith alI other oroper4q There is just as mach obligation on the par of the territorial legislature to protect slaye as every other species of property. as ther isto protect Horses, cattle, dry goods. liquors etc. If they have right to discriminat, as to the one, they have as to the other and whether they have got the power o dlScnmlnation or not, is for the court tc decide, If any one disputes it. X < y Il there IS no power of discrimination or other species of property, Here is none .os ( staees Ii there is a power of discrimina tlon as to their property-and 1 think there ls-then it applies to slave property. IT other words, slace priperty is on an equal Jootiny acih oH other property"
 In the face of all this, in the teeth of his own words so recently uttered, in defiance of the supreme court and all judicial all. thority Mir. Douglas now declares that the automatic principle of public law" which enables a man to remove his property from place to place, wherever the local law does not forbid it's coming, is not applicable to slaves. To sustain himself in making this distinction he produces two short passages, both of which have been picked out O. one paragraph in Story's "Confict of Laws. '' l These passages Twill the reader believe it? ] merely show that a slave becomes free when taken to a country achere sla0eoy is not tole- rated 5y loec! Judge Story cites cases de- cided in England, France, Scotland and Massachusetts to prove that the laws of those countries, being opposed to slavery, will dissolve the relation of master and slave when brought in contact with it. I say that slaves may be taken to Kansas or Kentucky without being emancipated :: Mr. Douglas, with great gravity and com placency, answers me, that 1 am wrong, because slavery is not tolerated in England or Massachusetts,! No instance of non sequitur so glaring and so palpable has ever before fallen under my notice
 MT. Douglas forbears to burden his pages with the long list of authorities " which he says are cited by Judge Story It is a curious fact that not single one of those authorities touches the question in contro- versy between us. They all, without ex- ception, refer to cases in which there was direct conflict between the law of the country where the slave came from, and the law of the country to which he was taken No one of the writers referred to has outraged common sense by saying or limiting, that slaves are made free by mere removal with out any such conflict of law. The quota tion from the opinion of the supreme court in Priqg vs Pennsylvania is made with the same rashness and with no nearer approach to the point.
 The public will doubtless be somewhat surprised by Mr. Douglas unique mode of dealing with books. Fer myself. am in expressibly amazed at it. 1 have no right to suppose that he intended to insult the intelligence ofhis readers, or to impose up- on their ignorance by making a parade of fearing and research, which he did not possess. But how shall we account for quotations like those? 1 am obliged to leave the riddle unread.
 H. Assuming that slaves taken from a slaveholding State into a territory continue to be slaves, can the rights of their owners be afterwards divested by an act of the territorial legislature? They can cer- tainly, if the territories are sovereign States: if not, not. On the question Mr. Douglas has placed himself in most peculiar posi- ton. Heretofore he has aItenativeIy af- frmed and denied the sovereignty of the territories. In his last pamphlet he seems to think the middle way safest, he admits that they are not sorereign, but asserts that they have "the attributes of s0pereiq,lta. D This is not at all ingenious. It must be apparent to the dullest understanding that a government, which has the attributes of sovereignty, is sovereign
 Sovereignty is the supreme authority of an independent State No government is sovereign which may be controlled by a superior government. Asapplied to polit- lcal structures, supremacy and sovereignty are convertible terms. To prove this I will not refer to "the primers of political science;;" it is found in all the horn books. Every half-grown boy in the country who has given the usual amount of study to the English tongue, or who has occasionally looked into a dictionary, knows that the sovereignty of a government consists in its uncomfortable right to exercise the highest power. But Mir. Douglas tries to clothe ' the territories with the "attributes of sover- | eignty," not by proving the supremacy of their jurisdiction in any matter or thing whatsoever, but merely by showing that they may be, and some of them have been, authorized to lcgjSl0te within certain limits, to exercise the right of eminent domaia, to lay and collect lures for territorial purposes, to deprive a citizen of Ete, liberty or pro- Per'y as a punishment for crime, and to creote corporations. All this is true enough. but it does by no means follow that the provisional government of territory is. therefore, sovereign i'll any sense of the word. A city council may legislate, but the city IS still subordinate to the State which gave 1t political being The right of eminent domain is delegated every day to private corporations, but no turnpike company pretendS to be a soverign state. The courts in many places have authority to create corporations, the sheriff of a county has power to imprison or hang indicators, and the supervisors of township can levy taxes but l think no judge, sheriff or su- pervisor has ever claimed the purple or the diadem on any such ground. Governments always act by their agents, but the agent whether it be an individual officer or a political corporation, like a city or terri tory, IS not in any case sovereign, supreme and uncontrollable Thus the arguments of Mir. Douglas, which he elaborates through page after page with wearsome pains, are but touched with the finger of investigation and they disappear forever.
 The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
 And these are of them''
 Mir. Douglas, the senator, the statesman. the standing candidate for the Presidency. should not have borrowed from the lawyer lingo and small wit of the abolition party. the stale, often repeated, and worn out as sertion, that emigrants cannot have right to the property they take with them, be- cause 1t will introduce into the territory or State where they settle, all the conflicting laws of the different States from whence they came. Nothing could be less worthy of his high place in the councils of the ma ton. He ought to know that goods of va rious kinds are going continually into each