Mr. DMUNDs. Mr. President, when I was interrupted last evening by the motion to adjourn I was about to read. the act of Congress of the 30th of May, 1854, to show the position that the Congress of the U.S., under the influences which then controlled it, assumed in respect to this Territory and in respect to the sister Territory of Kansas. I was about to read from it also to show, in reply to the observations of my friendfrom Kansas who addressed us last evening, [Mr. Powehoy] that if there be anything in this notion of estoppel upon the legislative power of the country, when we go back to the foundation of the thing we find that we should be now estopped from refusing admittance to Territory this into the State representation of the nation if she presented herself, as happily she does not, with a constitution which. involuntary servitude and perpetual slavery. That act declares: “That when admitted as a State or States, the said Territory or any portion of thesameshall be received into the Union with or without slavery as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.” Another section of the act provides, “that the true intent and meaning of this act is to leave to the people of the Territories” the exclusive right and privilege of regulating their own domestic affairs in their own way. It is a complete delegation of the power, which the very passage of the act itself implied to have resided in Congress before that time, to the people of the Territory to set up institutions, which should be in opposition to what we all now agree is the proper political status of a Territory, or not, as they pleased, and Congress committed itself if it had the power to do so, committed us if it had the power to do so without question, without objection, to receive this Territory into the laxy of States with slavery if she chose to o: it. For one, I wish to repudiate once for all the idea that the Congress of 1854 or of 1864 or of any other year had any rightful authority whatever to forestall the action which we here and now think it fit to take respecting the political condition of the people of any Torritory or any section of the country over whom by the Constitution we are authorized to exercise control. It is a doctrine which would carry us, as Englishmen are fond of saying, to grief very rapidly indeed. en in 1864 what is called the enablin act was passed, Congress did not feel o bound by the political opinions of ten years before that time; it did not find itself committed then to any faith which would preclude it from imposing such further conditions and restrictions as it might think desirable for the welfare, not only of the people of this Territory. but of the whole nation, and therefore it provided that the 78,000 miles of territory which composed the Territory of Nebraska might be admitted as a State, the language of the act being that “the inhabitants of that portion of the Territory” within the described limits “are hereby authorized” to set up a State government “Provided, That the constitution when formed shall be republican and not repugnant to the constitution of the U.S and the principles of the DeclarIndep: And provided further, That said constitution shall provide by an article forever irrevocable” And I beg the learned Senators who believe in the power of the States to repudiate their constitutional compacts the moment they get in, or to repudiate the conditions upon which we may choose to admit them, to observe it “By an article forever irrevocable without the consent of the Congressof the U.S.: 1. That slavery or involuntary servitude shall be forever prohibited in this State. That perfect toleration of religious sentiment shall be secured, and no inhabitant of said State shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode of religious worship. 3. agreeThat the people inhabiting said Territory do and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands, ” &c. It makes no provision as to the class or color or race of persons who shall be authorized to set up that Territory into a State, and who shall then be entitled, having complied with these conditions, to present themselves to us that their claims for admission may be considered. There is, therefore, it appears to me, no plainer proposition than that now, when the constitution is presented to us, we are, without any estoppel or committal or other qualification, left free to exercise our judgment and discretion which the Constitution has reposed in us upon the question whether, under the circumstances as they now exist, in the light of the history that since then has passed over the country, it is fit and right that this Territory ought to be admitted as a State with the constitution which she brings to us; because, as I have said, in the nature of things there can be no binding estoppel upon the legislative power of the country at any time, and because it is manifest to me that the act of 1864 which authorized the creation of a State from this Territory commits us to no principle whatever upon the subject of the right of suffrage, the right of representation, the method upon which the State should organize its government, except upon the general declaration of principles which should be the guide to that people in forming a constitution. Hence, if we find in that constitution anything respecting the establishment of its courts; the trial by jury a right held in most civilized countries, deriving theirancestry from Anglo Saxon sources, at least, to be sacred if we find in it anything which does not commend itself to our sound sense of what is just and right, is it to be said that by any implied estop pel our mouths are to be closed and we must accept that now which otherwise we would not have done? I think, then, sir, that it is clear that we must meet this case upon the reality, if it be a reality, of the question which is presented, and that we cannot shelter ourselves, however much we might wish to do it, behind the thin disguise that we have committed ourselves to this false step which we are asked to take. We must meet the question as it is. Now, what is the question? The question is, 1st, whether we have the power under the Constitution of the U.S. to dictate the terms and conditions and qualifications under which Territories shall be created into new States and adolitted to an equal participation in the active operations of }. government. If we are a mere machine, obliged to act whenever a Territory presents itself and in whatever form it presents itself, as the Douglas doctrine upon which this Territory was 1st organized seems to declare, then of course there is no rooms for debate; we are exercising, then, merely executive and not legislative functions, and we have no opportunity for the exercise of any discretion whatever. If, on the contrary, the grant of power which the Constitution gives to Congress to admit new States into the national councils is one which implies judgment and discretion, implies that sense of responsibility which ought to operate in all legislative affairs, then most clearly it is our duty to scan to the uttermost letter the constitution of any new formed State which is presented to us. The Constitution of the U.S. upon the subject of our power over the admission of new States reads as follows: “New States may be admitted by the congressinto this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the junction of 2 or more States or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.” There is an unqualified grant of power in the 1st instance; discretionary, depending upon the will of the lawmaking power of the country for the admission of new States. Then there are imposed upon it conditions and qualifications respecting the carving of new States out of old ones, and no other condition and no other qualification whatever. Therefore I take it to be plain and beyond contradiction that it is within the clear constitutional power of congress to prescribe the terms and qualifications and the time and the fitness upon which any new State shall be created out of any of its Territories. It is a right which cannot be questioned at all; and it is a right which, independent of the Constitution, flows logically and necessarily from the supreme legislative dominion which we have over the Territories of the U.S.; Territories many of whom, this very Territory indeed itself, were not within the dominion of this Government when the Constitution was formed, and which, therefore, the Constitution itself by its own vigor never could have operated upon. We having exclusive and complete jurisdiction over these Territories, and having complete discretionary power by the express letter of the Constitution over the admission of States, is it to be said that we must shut our eyes to what is contained in the constitution of a Territory which is of fered to us for acceptance, and are we to be told that this objection or that objection which may be just in itself cannot be heard because we are trampling upon the rights of anybody or set of men? I take it not. There is no inherent right in the people of any Territory to be constituted into a State. Congress may never organize a Territory at all; it may never dispose of its public lands there; when organ. it may keep it in the perpetual condition of a Territory if it pleases; because all the considerations which govern such questions are considerations which merely appeal to the ordinary legislative discretion of the lawmaking power, and therefore every circumstance and consideration which enters into the fitness of the thing itself which is proposed to be done is a matter that we have no right to set aside. Then, Mr. President, if we have the power, and it is our duty in the exercise of that discretionary power to exert it as we do all other legislative power upon the principles of legis. lative and political justice, the question is what this constitution ought to contain to authorize us to receive this new State into the family of the nation. It would hardly seem that, on this side of the Chamber, in reaching forward to the discussion of a question of that kind, I should be met with any objections from the gentleman who so properly leads us on these territorial measures, a man who has been all his lifetime in the skirmish line and front bat tle rank of liberty and equal rights everywhere, He can hardly, I think, rise in his place and tell us that it is not right and fit that men, irrespective of race and color, should be entitled in a republican, and a free government to the exercise of political rights. I mean innocent men; I mean men who have forfeited no mat ural or social or political rights which they may have been otherwise entitled to by treason or any other crime; but innocent, honest citizens of the country, without respect to race or color, are certainly, the honorable Senator must admit, entitled, as a matter of justice as well as a matter of policy and purity, to be represented, to have a voice in the selection of their representatives, and to be among those who consent to the laws which are to affect their life, their liberty, and their pursuit of happiness. Why, sir, the notion that Government is instituted for a select few who are to be discovered by their descent as kings are, or by their learning as the priests used to be, or by their property as aristocratical Governments oare, ought to have been exploded in the light of recent events in this country. There can be no solid foundation upon which democratic government I do not mean to use the term “republican because that seems to excite the opposition of the other side of the Chamber as to the definition of the term there can be no solid foundation upon which democratic government, if we have any faith in it, can rest except that the people, irrespective of what their race is, irrespective of the accidental conditions of birth or fortune or learning, must consent to the laws and have a voice in the selection of the agents who are to make and execute the laws under which they are to live. I believe that every writer upon the theory of democratic government, upon the abstract theory of all just government, agrees that any arbitrary distinction, any arbitrary test, even of intelligence, has no o in the foundation of the exercise of those rights which relate to the selection of the persons who are to administer the government for the benefit of all; because the man who is ignorant has precisely the same right to protection, he has precisely the same right to every species of protection that the law gives to his neighbor who is intelligent, he has the same right to choose among his intelligent neighbors as any other man which of them shall make laws for him. The absurdity of undertaking to set up these tests is the more manifest from the fact that so far as the world has at present progressed we cannot fail to see that if any special test of intelligence or of property or any other arbitrary rule were laid down, the larger part of man kind would have no voice in government. There are many communities in which intelligence has reached a very small point of advancement. Is it to be said that those communities must necessarily and theoretically be governed by some despot or king; and if so, how is, he to be selected? By his superior strength or by his age or by his color? No, Mr. President; there is and there can be no just dispute, when we consider this subject in the light of the democratic equality which we all profess to believe in, that the right to select your rulers, the right to have a voice in choosing those who are to make your laws, must necessarily reside in every person in the community over whom those laws are to operate, so long as that person entitles himself by obe dience to the law, by making no war upon his neighbor, by committing no crime, to have a voice in the administration of affairs. I do not mean by this to undertake to make any argument against the propriety of learning. That is not the point. The more we have of it, the better we shall be off. But I do undertake to say that to make learning or color or property or race a test in a democratic country of the right to choose its rulers, is to sap the foundation of the very principle of the democracy upon which you act. In this body, by a very large majority, we have agreed to this proposition, and discarding every test save citizenship and loyalty we have declared that distinctions of race and color or of learning have no place in the democratic theory of this Government; and we expect to be obliged, gratefully obliged it may turn out, to carry this principle wherever the Constitution permits us to carry it, into more sections of this country than it has yet been carried by far. Following upon that action of ours in this district, the people of this Territory, over which Congress has the same control, for which it has made laws and set up institutions, and from which it may take them today lawfully and constitutionally if it pleases, come to us with a constitution which has this inherent and radical distinction. Wherefore is it there 2