ing destroyed nearly all the conservative elements of our State constitutions, and threatening the same upon the Federal Constitution. Seeking to establish the pernicious dogma that our constitutions, those sacred safeguards of civil liberty, those protectors of the rights of property, and especially slave property, are always and immediately under the power of a dominant party who may break them up without regard to the mode of alteration, however reasonable, prescribed by the people in those constitutions. Seeking to put the treaty-making power into the hands of their party chief-the President-freed from a necessary salutary control of the Senate. Seeking to take from Congress, and give to their party chief, the war-making power, together with the abandonment of the long-cherished national policy of non-interference with the affairs of other nations. Seeking to give the Federal Government pernicious control over the State banks and railroads, through the instrumentality of a bankrupt law. Second. Its double-faced duplicity. Having one set of principles and policy for the North and another for the South, and no common cohesive principle but the power of public plunder. It is a great amalgam of men without regard to principle. Old Federalists and Locofoco Democrats, Nullifiers, Disunionists, Tariffites, Distributioners, Internal Improvement men, Strict Construction States' Right men, Red Republicans, Socialists, Agrarians, Free-Soilers, Slaveholding Nabobs, Ultra Pro-slavery Fire-eaters, are all mingled with their opposites,—even their President not agreeing as to subjects of great national policy with his own cabinet, nor the members of the cabinet with each other. Third. Its corruption. Having, according to the indignant avowal of one of its own chiefs, rendered ours "the most corrupt government in the world;" and, according to that of another of its chiefs, fit to be "pitched into the Potomac." According to the admission, and attempted justification of its principal newspaper organs, levying black mail from all officers and contractors to retain power by corrupting the ballot-box. The enormous amount of the corruption fund thus raised may be judged from the fact that a single contractor, residing in Massachusetts, paid $16,000 toward carrying the Pennsylvania elections in 1856, as was proven before a congressional committee. Giving the patronage of the navy yards to Democratic members to promote their elections, and filling the yards with useless and incompetent men for the same purpose. Giving contracts to the highest instead of the lowest bidder, and large lucrative contracts without competing bids with the same object. Giving $15,000 a year as compensation to an incompetent coal agent, who did nothing to earn his commissions excepting the making a flagrantly dishonest contract for coal, permitting the seller to be both weigher and inspector; the compensation to the agent being so grossly excessive that the President himself required its division among two others of his political pets. Compelling all persons seeking contracts to buy the influence of leading Democrats, at commissions varying from five to twenty per cent. on the gross amount of the contracts. Such prominent Democrats as the late Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and now Minister to Austria, taking these commissions while a member of Congress. One of these written contracts for pay for influence having been brought under the notice of President Buchanan, he said he saw no objection to it. Useless offices multiplied and extravagant compensation allowed to increase the power of the party. Rendering the ballot-box thoroughly corrupt. Bribery, boxstuffing, illegal voting, double, treble, quadruple voting, forged certificates of naturalization, false returns, and all manner of frauds procured by the Democracy, have become the constant mode of carrying every important election. Reversing the decision of his immediate predecessor, rendered upon the advice of the proper army officers, the present Secretary of War determined to sell the Fort Snelling Reservation without any such advice or consultation. He kept his determination secret except from three or four persons, to whom he made a private sale, at a sacrifice to the Government of certainly not less than $100,000, and, in the opinion of respectable witnesses, a great deal more. One of the persons to whom he made this secret private sale is a New York broker, who had been in the habit of loaning money to the Secretary, and who at the time was $20,000 in advance for him. Keeping up, for party purposes, the excitement on the slavery question, by pretended extra zeal for the purchase of Cuba, when it is known that Cuba cannot be bought, and clamoring for a repeal of the prohibition of the African slave-trade, when it is known that the repeal cannot be had; and wantonly insulting the North by saying that Kansas had population enough to be admitted as a slave State, but not half enough to be admitted as a free State. Deciding, at one session, for the purpose of keeping out two Republican Senators, that the rule hereafter, in admitting States, should be to require ninety-three thousand; and then at the next session, for the purpose of admitting two Democratic Senators, disregarding their own rule, and admitting Oregon, with a population of only forty thousand. Deciding, at one session, after full discussion and deliberation, when the effect was only to reject a Republican Senator, that the continuing assent of a majority of members of each branch of a legislature was requisite to a legal election; and then at the next deciding, for the purpose of retaining two Democratic Senators, that a fraudulent election was valid, though one branch never assented to, but protested against it, when a majority of the members of that branch were not present, and when a constitutional quorum of neither house was present. Fourth. Its wasteful extravagance. Increasing the public expenditures, for purposes other than the national debt, in six years, from about forty-three to upwards of seventy million. Making enormous donations of public lands to pet corporations -enabling a corporation in one instance, as proved, to spend a million of dollars in bribing national and State officials. Attempting to give one hundred and sixty acres of land to every unnaturalized foreigner who would settle on it. CHAPTER XIX. DISTRICTING POWER OF CONGRESS. PREAMBLE AND RESOLUTIONS OF THE LEGISLATURE OF Kentucky, WHEREAS, by the sole action of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, the second section of the Act of Congress for the apportionment of representatives among the several States, according to the sixth census, has been declared null and void, we deem it our duty to make the most solemn and formal protest against the recent action of that House on this subject. The second section of the act which the House of Representatives has thus attempted to annul, provides that representatives in Congress shall be elected by single districts, composed of contiguous territory. The necessity for this provision had become not merely obvious, but urgent. Further delay in the exercise of this necessary and important power would have put in peril the permanency of the fundamental structure of the General Government. The whole theory of the Constitution clearly demonstrates that the States, in their aggregate or corporate capacity, were to be represented, as States, in the Senate, while the people were to be represented in the other House, as one nation, on fair principles of popular representation. What was considered a fair popular representation by the framers of the Constitution, may be learned from the practice in the election of members to the various State legislatures at the period of its adoption, from the election of members of the Colonial legislatures and of the English House of Commons; as also from all contemporaneous exposition and discussion. None of these sources of information authorize the presumption that it was at all within the contemplation of the framers of the Constitution that the principle of a fair popular representation could be secured by a general ticket system, requiring the whole population of a State, amounting to three or four millions, to vote for an entire delegation, consisting of thirty or forty members. On the contrary, they all imply that the principle of fair popular representation requires such a subdivision of the constituent body as will bring the representative as near as may be within the personal acquaintance of those he represents, and subject him to an available accountability. They also all strongly imply that the true principles of republican government require that minorities, among political parties in a State, should have some chance of a voice in the national councils. The wise founders of our institutions did not lack the sagacity to perceive the great importance, as well to the majority as the minority, of having the conduct of those to whom the people's rights were confided watched and reported on by one or more vigilant and interested sentinels from the opposing party. This equal, just, and truly republican principle of representation had been not merely violated, but that equipoise of the whole constitutional fabric which is based upon it had been put in peril by the action of several of the States. Six of them had already adopted the general ticket system, thereby giving to some of the smaller States more actual strength in the councils of the nation than the largest States. This gross inequality and injustice had justly become the subject of general comment and complaint. It induced, some years back, the serious agitation of the question in our own Legislature, as to the propriety of adopting the general ticket system; and nothing but deference to the sanctity due even to the inferential theory of the Constitution prevented the dominant party from remedying the injustice, as to our State, by seizing the political party advantage which would have ensued from that system. Its adoption by one such State as Kentucky, in the heated temper of the public mind at that time, would have insured its speedy adoption, on plain principles of justifiable selfdefense, by every other State in the Union. Once adopted by the large States, all chance for correcting the evil, either by constitutional amendment or congressional legislation, would have been lost forever, and there would have ensued a most pernicious, radical and irremediable revolution in the whole structure of the Government. VOL. II.-13 |