Lxxxv.
At every stage the similitude between the wrongs of Kansas and those other wrongs against which our fathers rose becomes more apparent. Read the Declaration of Independence, and there is hardly an accusation against the British Monarch which may not now be hurled with increased force against the American President. The parallel has fearful particularity. Our fathers complained, that the King had ‘sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance,’—that he had ‘combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation,’—that he had ‘abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us,’—that he had ‘excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless savages,’—that ‘our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.’ And this arraignment was aptly followed by the damning words, that ‘a Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.’ And surely the President who does all these things cannot be less unfit than a Prince. At every stage the responsibility is brought directly to him. His offence is of commission and omission. He has done that which he ought not to have done, and has left undone that which he ought to have done. By his activity, the Prohibition of Slavery was overturned. By his failure to act, the honest emigrants in Kansas are left a prey to wrong of all kinds. His activity and inactivity are alike fatal. And now he stands forth the most conspicuous enemy of that unhappy Territory. As the tyranny of the British King is all renewed in the President, so are renewed on this floor the old indignities which embittered and fomented [296] the troubles of our fathers. The early petition of the American Congress to Parliament, long before any suggestion of Independence, was opposed—like the petitions of Kansas—because that body ‘was assembled without any requisition on the part of the Supreme Power.’ Another petition from New York, presented by Edmund Burke, was flatly rejected, as claiming rights derogatory to Parliament. And still another petition from Massachusetts Bay was dismissed as ‘vexatious and scandalous,’ while the patriot philosopher who bore it was exposed to peculiar contumely. Throughout the debates our fathers were made the butt of sorry jest and supercilious assumption. And now these scenes, with these precise objections, are renewed in the American Senate. ...
