the brave!" Well, now, when you orators get
that off next year, and, may be, this very year, how would you like some
old grizzled farmer to get up in the grove and deny it? [Laughter.] How
would you like that? But suppose Kansas comes in as a slave State, and
all the "border ruffians" have barbecues about it, and free-State men come
trailing back to the dishonored North, like whipped dogs with their tails
between their legs, it is--ain't it?--evident that this is no more the
"land of the free"; and if we let it go so, we won't dare to say "home of
the brave" out loud. [Sensation and confusion.]

Can any man doubt that, even in spite of the people's will, slavery will
triumph through violence, unless that will be made manifest and enforced?
Even Governor Reeder claimed at the outset that the contest in Kansas was
to be fair, but he got his eyes open at last; and I believe that, as a
result of this moral and physical violence, Kansas will soon apply for
admission as a slave State. And yet we can't mistake that the people
don't want it so, and that it is a land which is free both by natural
and political law. No law, is free law! Such is the understanding of all
Christendom. In the Somerset case, decided nearly a century ago, the great
Lord Mansfield held that slavery was of such a nature that it must take
its rise in positive (as distinguished from natural) law; and that in no
country or age could it be traced back to any other source. Will some
one please tell me where is the positive law that establishes slavery in
Kansas? [A voice: "The bogus laws."] Aye, the bogus laws! And, on the same
principle, a gang of Missouri horse-thieves could come into Illinois and
declare horse-stealing to be legal [Laughter], and it would be just as
legal as slavery is in Kansas. But by express statute, in the land of
Washington and Jefferson, we may soon be brought face to face with the
discreditable fact of showing to the world by our acts that we prefer
slavery to freedom--darkness to light! [Sensation.]

It is, I believe, a principle in law that when one party to a contract
violates it so grossly as to chiefly destroy the object for which it is
made, the other party may rescind it. I will ask Browning if that ain't
good law. [Voices: "Yes!"] Well, now if that be right, I go for rescinding
the whole, entire Missouri Compromise and thus turning Missouri into a
free State; and I should like to know the difference--should like for
any one