slaveholder.

The honorable Senator from Kentucky inquired what, under this new
doctrine, would prevent the majority of the people of the States of
the Union from changing the present Federal Constitution, and
abrogating all existing guarantees for the protection of the small
States, and any peculiar or particular interest confined to a
minority of the States of the Union. The analogy, I admit, is not
complete between the Federal Constitution and a constitution of a
State; but the promulgation of the general principle, that a
majority of the people are fettered by no constitutional
restrictions in the exercise of their right to change their form of
government, is dangerous. That is quite enough for the purposes of
demagogues and incendiary agitators. When I read the special
message of the President, I said to some friends that the message,
taking it altogether, was replete with more dangerous heresies than
any paper I had ever seen emanating, not from a President of the
United States, but from any political club in the country, and
calculated to do more injury. I consider it in effect, and in its
tendencies, as organizing anarchy.

We are told that if we shall admit Kansas with the Lecompton
constitution, this whole difficulty will soon be settled by the
people of Kansas. How? By disregarding the mode and forms
prescribed by the constitution for amending it? No. I am not sure
that the President, after all the lofty generalities announced in
his message, in regard to the inalienable rights of the people,
intended to sanction the idea that all the provisions of the
Lecompton constitution in respect to the mode and form of amending
it should be set aside. He says the legislature now elected may, at
its first meeting, call a convention to amend the constitution; and
in another passage of his message he says that this inalienable
power of the majority must be exercised in a lawful manner. This is
perplexing. Can there be any lawful enactment of the legislature in
relation to the call of a convention, unless it be in conformity
with the provisions of the constitution? They require that
two-thirds of the members of the legislature shall concur in passing
an act to take the sense of the people upon the call of a
convention, and that the vote shall be taken at the next regular
election, which cannot be held until two years afterwards. How can
this difficulty be got over? The truth is, that unless all
constituti