of conscience, with God's statute-book open before them, he pleaded the cause of justice and humanity in that court of equity and final appeal. After stating and illustrating the various ways in which the defender of slavery contravened the clearly revealed will of God, he said: "To these primal truths he is infidel. To the rights of his fellow-mortals he is infidel. To God's higher law he is infidel. Against these he wages unceasing war.”

But among the boldest and most clearly defined speeches of the session, in both its enunciation of principles and its characterization of measures, was one delivered, near its close, by Philemon Bliss of Ohio. With refreshing plainness he gave his reasons for not indulging in the discussion of the Lecompton business, saying that, though he could reason with a highwayman and remonstrate with a pickpocket, he could "find no fit words for discussing in a Republican representative body the propriety of forcing a dark despotism upon a protesting people." "If the statement of the proposition will not carry its own damnation," he said, "no parliamentary language of mine can fitly describe it; and the mind that can for a moment entertain it is entirely beyond my reach." After describing the humiliating position to which the Slave Power had brought the nation, and saying that surprise had been expressed that a section of the Union, and that "comparatively weak and poverty-stricken," should be enabled to carry things with so high a hand, he said there was no cause of wonder even in this" omnipotence of evil." The cause was to be looked for in the different spirit and purposes which characterized the enemies and the friends of freedom: the former, "all will, all energy, all perseverance," have a great idea, have subordinated everything to its prosecution; the latter, "intent on gain and peace, have ignored all fixed principle, been blind to any great end, and have substituted a shuffling expediency for an enduring purpose. The I will' of the one is met by the 'please don't' of the other; and 'I'm afraid I can't' is the bravest response to the grim' you shall.'"

There were other speeches, delivered by both the friends and the enemies of the measure in issue, which exposed the barbar

izing influences of slavery, the reckless audacity of the propagandists, and the unscrupulous profligacy of those who for personal and partisan ends were willing to accept the most humiliating conditions, make any sacrifices of principle, and commit themselves to a line of conduct, however cruel and however mean. Nor could it well have been otherwise. When leading men, an administration, a national party, accepted from the Slave Power the advocacy and responsibility of a series of acts which Robert J. Walker resigned office rather than sustain and execute, and which Henry A. Wise characterized as “unveiled trickeries" and "shameless frauds," their own speeches, State papers, and votes, better, indeed, than the criticisms of their Republican censors, could not but reveal the depraved and desperate character of the policy entered upon, and the sad demoralization it both betokened and so greatly increased.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE ENGLISH BILL.

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Kansas fraud. Relative strength of parties in the two houses. Bill and substitute in the Senate. Committee of conference. - English bill characterized. Debate. - Speeches of Howard, Grow, and Bingham. - Opposition to it in the Senate. Speeches of Stuart, Douglas, Wilson, Seward. — AntiLecompton Democrats. Conferences between them and Republicans. Faltering. Testimony of Mr. Haskin.-S. S. Cox. - Attempts at bribery. Twelve remain firm. -Joseph C. McKibbin. - Bill adopted by both houses. - Rejected by the people of Kansas.

FROM testimonies that could not be gainsaid and by witnesses that could not be impeached a most gigantic scheme of duplicity, violence, and fraud had been revealed. Kansas lay helpless under the feet of a proslavery executive in undisguised complicity with the men who had committed these crimes. Its only hope was in Congress, and there it could only depend upon the House of Representatives, as the Senate was unequivocally committed to the President's policy. On the 23d of March, the Senate proceeded to vote upon the bill for the admission of Kansas. Mr. Crittenden moved a substitute, providing that it should be submitted to a vote of the people, and, if rejected, they should be authorized to choose delegates to a convention to frame a constitution. But this substitute was rejected by ten majority. The Republicans; Bell, Crittenden, and Kennedy, Americans; and Broderick, Douglas, and Stuart, anti-Lecompton Democrats, - voted for it. The bill was then passed by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-five, Mr. Pugh voting against it.

In the House of Representatives, William Montgomery of Pennsylvania, an anti-Lecompton Democrat, offered, as an amendment to the bill, the same substitute which had been offered in the Senate by Mr. Crittenden, and it was carried by a majority of eight. The Senate rejected it, asked for a

committee of conference, and appointed Green, Hunter, and Seward on its part. The House adhered to Montgomery's amendment, but agreed to the committee of conference by the casting vote of the Speaker, and English, Stephens, and Howard were appointed on its part. The committee concurred in a report, Mr. Seward of the Senate and Mr. Howard of the House dissenting. This report was made in both bodies on the 23d of April. It was made in the House by William H. English of Indiana, and was known as the English bill.

This report excited surprise and indignation, and evoked the most determined opposition. Though equivocal and capable of widely different constructions, it was regarded by the friends of Kansas as a surrender. It was, too, in marked contrast with the speech of its reputed author, in which he had not only opposed the Lecompton constitution, but had avowed his purpose, though a personal admirer and stanch supporter of his administration, to part company with the President rather than give it his vote. But now and suddenly he had reached the conclusion that the exigencies of the occasion demanded concession. In his remarks accompanying the report he said: "A great question, perhaps the greatest of the age, one which has agitated and engrossed the public mind for the past four years, has at last come to a crisis," and the committee had concluded that "it was not best to hazard longer the peace of the country for the sake of an unimportant point or unmeaning word." He proposed, therefore, to accept the Lecompton constitution, with all its enormities and the admitted fact that it was in no sense the work of the people," on a condition."

In substance, it offered to the people in connection with the constitution a large land-grant with these conditions: if they voted to accept it, they were to be admitted with the constitution and the land; if they voted against receiving it, they would not receive the land, nor could they become a State until the Territory had acquired a population sufficiently large to elect a Representative to the House. Singular as was the form of this proposition, unfair and double-faced as

were its spirit, purpose, and purport, the circumstances under which it was presented rendered still more reprehensible this action of its movers, and more creditable and almost wonderful the conduct of those who rejected it. For those struggling pioneers, harassed and harried as they were, and strongly tempted to purchase peace at any price, to " spurn the bribe" was indeed heroic, and revealed the stuff they were made of.

Mr. Howard, a member of the conference committee, characterized it as a measure to keep open the quarrel, imposing, as it did, one set of conditions if the Territory applied for admission as a slave State, and another set if it applied as a free State. He said it offered a premium to Kansas to become a slave State; but he thought that if the people could have a fair chance, they would reject it "four to one." Indeed, he predicted that they would never submit to it on any conditions whatever.

The proposition of the bill was, indeed, a gigantic bribe. Bluster and bullying had been tried, exhausted, and they had failed. Mercenary considerations were now proposed, combined with the menace that, if the bribe was not accepted, Kansas could not be admitted until, by the gradual accretion of numbers, its population should reach the general" ratio of representation" for members of the House. Its spirit and purport were tersely expressed and characterized by Mr. Crittenden, whose devotion to slavery would rescue his judgment from the imputation of prejudice against the bill on account of its proslavery character. "This measure," he declared, says to the people of Kansas: If you choose to take this Lecompton constitution with all its imperfections on its head; if you choose to silence all the complaints and all the denunciations which you have made against it; if you choose to humiliate yourselves as freemen by a confession of as much baseness as that would imply, then, no matter what your numbers are, we shall make no inquiry, but come into the Union at once, with all the dowry of land. But if you will not come in on these conditions, then you shall not come in at all until your population shall amount to that number which is fixed by the general law as the representation