Show can exercise no rights but such as we J approve and we can extend or curtail your rights andprivileges by any alteration altera-tion of your charter we may see proper to make or abolish altogether your charter at our pleasure is equivalent to the claim made by the imperial government govern-ment of Great Britain that it had the right to bind the American colonies in all cases whatsoever In each case it is the claim of absolute power over communities com-munities and if such a power exists and it exists of right then there is nothing it may not do It can call Virtue vice send the former w eping in chains to meet a felons doom and reward re-ward the latter with the emoluments of office and make it honorable In fact there is nothing but what may be done by an absolute power there is no evil but what may be constituted Jy such a power a virtue before the law there is no good but r what it could 1n the statutes at least make a crime and punish it with whatever degree of severity was thought proper If the power of the general government over the Territories is absolute then it can abolish our Territorial Ter-ritorial governments and reduce the people to the abject condition of slaves to be legislated for at the sweet will of a tyrannical Congress No one need whine at the expression tyrannical Congress We have learned that congresses con-gresses can do wrong as well as kings and to the people who are oppressed it is no relief to say that the oppression is enforced upon them by a Republican Congress instead of a bloated kingin both cases it is oppression A more infamous thing than that claim of absolute power over the Territories Terri-tories never came into existence and so long as it is exercised let no man say that slavery is abolished in the United States For if a people who may be stripped of their political rights and beat be-at the complete mercy of an authoritY au-thority outside themselves are not in a condition of slavery then no such a thing as slavery exists in the world |