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them. It is, therefore, not principle, but opposition to a man that causes the present disorganized state of the House. Let gentlemen explain this, if they can, to their constituents.

II.

THE "LAWS" OF KANSAS.

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 21, 1856.

The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union on the Army appropriation bill, Mr. Colfax said:

Mr. Chairman: I desire to give notice that I shall move, when we reach the third clause of the pending Army bill, the following amendment; and I read it now, because the remarks I shall make to-day are designed to show its necessity:

"But Congress, hereby disapproving of the code of alleged laws officially communicated to them by the President, and which are represented to have been enacted by a body claiming to be the Territorial Legislature of Kansas; and also disapproving of the manner in which said alleged laws have been enforced by the authorities of said Territory, expressly declare that, until these alleged laws shall have been affirmed by the Senate and House of Representatives as having been enacted by a legal Legislature, chosen in conformity with the organic law by the people of Kansas, no part of the military force of the United States shall

be employed in aid of their enforcement; nor shall any citizen of Kansas be required, under their provisions, to act as a part of the posse comitatus of any officer acting as marshal or sheriff in said Territory."

My especial object to-day is to speak relative to this code of laws, now in my hand, which has emanated from a so-called Legislative Assembly of Kansas; and for the making of which your constituents, in common with mine, have paid their proportion-the whole having been paid for out of the Treasury of the United States. In speaking of the provisions embodied in this voluminous document, and of the manner in which these "laws" have been enforced, I may feel it my duty to use plain and direct language; and I find my exemplar, as well as my justification for it, in the unlimited freedom of debate which, from the first day of the session, has been claimed and exercised by gentlemen of the other side of the House. And, recognizing that freedom of debate as we have, to the fullest extent, subject only to the rules of the House, we intend to exercise it on this side, when we may see fit to do so, in the same ample manner. Hence, when we have been so frequently called "fanatics," and other epithets of denunciation, no one on these seats has even called gentlemen of the other side to order. When it has pleased them to denounce us as Black Republicans, or colored Republicans, we have taken no exception to the attack, for we regard freedom of speech as one of the pillars of our free institutions. When, not content with this, they have charged us with implied perjury, in being hostile to the Constitution, and unfaithful to

the Union, we have been content to leave the world to judge between us and our accusers-a scrutiny in which principles will have more weight than denunciation. In spite of all these attacks we have not been moved to any attempt to restrict the perfect and most unlimited freedom of speech on the part of our denouncers; for we acknowledge the truth of Jefferson's sentiment, that "Error ceases to be dangerous when Reason is left free to combat it."

If that constitutional safeguard of our rights and liberties, free speech in debate, is to be recognized anywhere, it should certainly be recognized, enforced, and protected in this House. Every representative of a free constituency, if worthy of that responsible position, should speak here at all times, not with "bated breath," but openly and fearlessly, the sentiments of that constituency; for, Sir, it is not alone the two hundred and thirty-four members of this House who mingle in this arena of debate; but here, within this bar, are the teeming millions of American freemen, not individually participating, as in Athens in the olden time, in the enactment of laws and the discussion and settlement of the foreign and domestic policy of the nation, but still, Sir, participating in the persons of their representatives, whom they have commissioned to speak for them, in the important questions which are presented for our consideration. Here, in this august presence, before the whole American people, thus represented, stand, and must ever stand, States and statesmen, legislators and jurists, parties and principles, to be subject to the severest scrutiny and the

most searching review. Here Alabama arraigns Massachusetts, as she has done through the mouth of one of her Representatives but a few weeks since; and here Massachusetts has equally the right to arraign any other State of the Confederacy. And while the Republic stands, the freedom of debate, guaranteed and protected by the Constitution, must and will be sustained and enforced on this floor.

Mr. Chairman, I feel compelled, on this occasion, therefore, by truth and by a conscientious conviction of what I know to be the feelings of my constituents— for whom I speak as much as I do for myself-to denounce, as I do this day, the "code" of the so-called Legislature of Kansas as a code of tyranny and oppression, a code of outrage and of wrong, which would disgrace the Legislature of any State of the Union, as it disgraces the Goths and Vandals who, after invading and conquering the Territory, thus attempted to play the despot over its people, and to make the white citizens of Kansas greater slaves than the blacks of Missouri. No man can examine the decrees of Louis Napoleon, no matter how ignorant he may have been of the procession of events in France for the past six years, without having the conviction forced upon his mind that they emanated from an usurper and a despot. The very enactments embodied in these decrees bear testimony against him. The limitations on the right of the subject; the mockery of the pretended freedom of elections which he has vouchsafed to the people; the rigid censorship of the press; the shackles upon the freedom of speech; all combine to prove that

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