y
nothing in the whole law upon the subject--in fact, nothing to lead a
reader to think of the subject. To my judgment it is equally free from
everything from which repeal can be legally implied; but, however this
may be, are men now to be entrapped by a legal implication, extracted from
covert language, introduced perhaps for the very purpose of entrapping
them? I sincerely wish every man could read this law quite through,
carefully watching every sentence and every line for a repeal of the
Ordinance of '87, or anything equivalent to it.

Another point on the Washington act: If it was intended to be modeled
after the Utah and New Mexico acts, as Judge Douglas insists, why was it
not inserted in it, as in them, that Washington was to come in with or
without slavery as she may choose at the adoption of her constitution?
It has no such provision in it; and I defy the ingenuity of man to give a
reason for the omission, other than that it was not intended to follow the
Utah and New Mexico laws in regard to the question of slavery.

The Washington act not only differs vitally from the Utah and New Mexico
acts, but the Nebraska act differs vitally from both. By the latter
act the people are left "perfectly free" to regulate their own domestic
concerns, etc.; but in all the former, all their laws are to be submitted
to Congress, and if disapproved are to be null. The Washington act goes
even further; it absolutely prohibits the territorial Legislature, by very
strong and guarded language, from establishing banks or borrowing money on
the faith of the Territory. Is this the sacred right of self-government
we hear vaunted so much? No, sir; the Nebraska Bill finds no model in the
acts of '50 or the Washington act. It finds no model in any law from Adam
till to-day. As Phillips says of Napoleon, the Nebraska act is grand,
gloomy and peculiar, wrapped in the solitude of its own originality,
without a model and without a shadow upon the earth.

In the course of his reply Senator Douglas remarked in substance that he
had always considered this government was made for the white people and
not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too. But in
this remark of the Judge there is a significance which I think is the key
to the great mistake (if there is any such mistake) which he has made
in this Nebraska measure. It shows that the Judge has no very vivid
impression that the negro is human, and consequently has no idea th