Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President, I am not one of those who are in the least degree disposed to abandon a particle of principle in a question of this kind, or of any other jto save any emergency whatever. I will never, any more than the Senfrom Iowa, “sell the truth to save the hour, ” however important or urgent may be the exigencies of that hour, because the truth and justice is, in the long run, the highest possible expediency. If I believed as the Senfrom Iowa believes, that there were any doubt in respect to the efficacy of the amendment which I have proposed to control the rights of the citizens in the State of Nebraska irrespective of her constitution and irrespective of the will of her people, I should agree with him that we ought to adopt the amendment of the Senfrom Missouri and not the amendment which I have had the honor to propose. But inasmuch as it appears to me to be as plain a legal proposition as any that can be asserted, that congress, in passing an act of legislation, has a right to affix such qualifications to, and conditions upon, that act of legislation as shall seem fit to it, I have no hesitation in proposing the amendment which I shall offer as a substitute for that of the Senfrom missouri; and I do it in accordance with the idea which I entertained that, in proposing this method of legislation, and putting it into the form of law, we stand upon the true constitutional grounds in exercising our duty as the guardians of the nation. We have a right to create States; we have a right to govern Territories; we have a right to sweep them away. Now, if we think it fit to erect the people of this Territory into a State we can say on what conditions they shall be a State. That people may propose to us a constitution for their local government which may not in some of its respects agree with our notions of what is right and just; for example, they may not provide for a trial by jury in the usual form, but may organize a kind and species of jury which they may choose to prefer. In such a case we have a right to declare that anything in their laws or constitution to the contrary, if we erect them into a State at all, shall be disregarded, and that our will in these respects shall be the paramount law of the land, and the reason why we have this right is because it grows out of the necessary and essential paramount power of Congress to erect the State or not, as it pleases. It was asked the other day, suppose these people do not choose to act under it, suppose they do not choose to be a State of that description, ham pered and qualified by these conditions which we impose upon them, what is their position? Isay, then, let them go without being a State. It is only by the voluntary will of the people in any State that they keep up a State organization. We have no power under the Consti otution or without the Constitution to enforce specific performance of political duties. If a man does not choose to go to the polls to vote we have no power to send the sheriff to compel him to vote or to compel him to vote one way rather than another; but we have the power to declare that if he does exercise the functions of a State which we and by our will only authorize him to execute, what shall be the terms on which he shall exercise those functions. That is the distinction. We are therefore not making a constitution for the people of Nebraska; we are not altering a constitution for the people of Nebraska, but we are declaring that anything in their constitution or their laws to the contrary notwithstanding, the practical exercise of certain fundamental political rights shall never be interfered with. That is what we do. I do not claim the credit, Mr. President, of having discovered any new invention in respect to this proposition, for I undertake to declare that a majority of the instances in which Territo ries have been erected into States will show on investigation that in some respect, not always a fundamental respect, not always an important respect, but in some respect or other the paramount authority of Congress in declaring what shall and what shall not be in that State has been asserted in the very act of admission, and after the act of admission no ordinance of the State has been required or adopted agreeing to these propositions. Where the act of admission and the enabling act went together, an ordinance has sometimes been required and has frequently been adopted; but when the act of admission itself has come to be passed, as in this case it is about to be I hope, and in others it has been, there has almost always been incorporated some provision touching public rights, touching public lands, touching the navigation of rivers