y reason to hope and believe that the law will be
fairly and impartially executed, so as to insure to every bona fide
inhabitant the free and quiet exercise of the elective franchise."

I readily agree that if all had a chance to vote they ought to have voted.
If, on the contrary, as they allege, and Judge Douglas ventures not to
particularly contradict, few only of the free-State men had a chance to
vote, they were perfectly right in staying from the polls in a body.

By the way, since the Judge spoke, the Kansas election has come off. The
Judge expressed his confidence that all the Democrats in Kansas would
do their duty-including "free-State Democrats," of course. The returns
received here as yet are very incomplete; but so far as they go, they
indicate that only about one sixth of the registered voters have really
voted; and this, too, when not more, perhaps, than one half of the
rightful voters have been registered, thus showing the thing to have
been altogether the most exquisite farce ever enacted. I am watching with
considerable interest to ascertain what figure "the free-State Democrats"
cut in the concern. Of course they voted,--all Democrats do their
duty,--and of course they did not vote for slave-State candidates. We soon
shall know how many delegates they elected, how many candidates they had
pledged to a free State, and how many votes were cast for them.

Allow me to barely whisper my suspicion that there were no such things in
Kansas as "free-State Democrats"--that they were altogether mythical, good
only to figure in newspapers and speeches in the free States. If there
should prove to be one real living free-State Democrat in Kansas, I
suggest that it might be well to catch him, and stuff and preserve his
skin as an interesting specimen of that soon-to-be extinct variety of the
genus Democrat.

And now as to the Dred Scott decision. That decision declares two
propositions--first, that a negro cannot sue in the United States courts;
and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the Territories. It
was made by a divided court dividing differently on the different points.
Judge Douglas does not discuss the merits of the decision, and in that
respect I shall follow his example, believing I could no more improve on
McLean and Curtis than he could on Taney.

He denounces all who question the correctness of that decision, as
offering violent resistance to it. But who resists it? Who has, in spite