And as being the fruit of an organized invasion they conclude,—

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Secondly, that the alleged Territorial Legislature was an illegally constituted body, and had no power to pass valid laws, and their enactments are therefore null and void."

While, however, in the first instances, the interference of the Missourians was wholly illegal, the Legislature thus illegally constituted took care to legalize the act for the future. Hence we find them enacting in the "Act instituting a poll-tax :”—

"Sect. 1. That every free white male above the age of twenty-one years who shall pay to the proper officer in Kansas Territory the sum of one dollar as a poll-tax, and shall produce to the judges of any election within and for the Territory of Kansas a receipt showing the payment of said poll-tax, shall be deemed a legal voter, and shall be entitled to vote at any election in said Territory during the year for which the same shall have been paid, provided that the right of suffrage shall be exercised only by citizens of the United States and those who have declared on oath their intention to become such, and shall have taken an oath to support

PRO-SLAVERY VOTES PURCHASED BY LAW. 87

the constitution of the United States and the provisions of the act organizing the Territory of Kansas."

In other words, by the payment of a single dollar any citizen of any one of the United States can purchase a voting power in Kansas for a twelvemonth, provided he pledges himself to the support of the Organic Act. In contrast to this, in the 11th section (Statutes, p. 282) it is expressly enacted that while every inhabitant of Kansas paying a territorial tax is a qualified elector, yet should he, on being challenged to take an oath to sustain the provisions of the Nebraska-Kansas Bill and the Fugitive Slave Law, "refuse to take such oath or affirmation, the vote of such person shall be rejected."

Hence, in the election of members for the new Legislature, the results of which we recently received, the pro-slavery Missourian who paid a dollar was entitled to a vote, while the Free-state settler in Kansas, though an owner of land in the Territory, was denied his right of suffrage by the Territorial law. The same law required the candidates also, in order to be eligible at that election, to take oath in support

of the Fugitive Slave Law (Statutes, p. 332). The prediction, therefore, as to the results of the election, which was ventured when these facts were first laid before the English public, was one in relation to which no room for speculation could be said to exist. The complete verification of it in the return of a wholly pro-slavery Legislature, of which we have recently received the intelligence, was the only result which could reasonably be anticipated.

At the risk of writing that which is less generally interesting, I have presented in this and the preceding chapter numerous extracts from public documents. I have deemed it right to do this, because the whole value of the present statements rests on the authority whence they are derived. The references I have made are, firstly, to the "Statutes of the Territory of Kansas," issued by the legislative body, to which, though chosen by the inhabitants of another State, the Government at Washington gives the sanction of its approval and its military aid; and, secondly, to the report and evidence of "the Special Committee appointed to investigate the troubles in the Territory of

OBJECT OF THE AUTHOR.

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Kansas"-a report which, though dissented from by one member of the committee, contains testimony which can never be overthrown or gainsaid.

My simple object has been to show that the dark deeds of which I was an eye-witness in Kansas, some of which I have detailed in former chapters, are no darker than the public acts of the slave-power in that territory, as exhibited in the archives of its House of Assembly; and that the fearful anarchy and unrestrained lawlessness which reign throughout the territory find both their parallel and their key in the flagrant unrighteousness of their legal enactments.

CHAPTER VIII.

Recapitulation. The "bogus" Legislature.--Men and Things in Kansas.-Different Classes of Settlers.-Immense Extent of Country.-Physical Aspect.-Rivers.-The Kansas and Missouri.-Undulating Prairie.- Caravans.-Indian Tribes. -Fertility of the Soil.-Salubrity of the Climate.-Commercial Advantages.-The "mad Missouri." - Excellent Market." Nebraska-Kansas Act."-A Race between North and South.--Pro-slavery Party in the Ascendant.---Struggle between the two Parties.-Tarring and Feathering.—Sale of a Free Man.-Model Legislators.--Discordant Elements. -Development.

IN In my earlier chapters on the subject of Kansas, I attempted to depict some of the scenes of riot and exhibitions of maddened hostility which fell within my own experience as a traveller in that territory immediately after the burning and sack of the town of Lawrence. In others I have endeavoured to explain the extraordinary fact of such lawlessness being permitted, by showing from the statute-books of the territory that such acts were not the fruit of a sudden and exceptional outbreak of pas