Lxxix.
The Apology tyrannical is founded on the mistaken act of Governor Reeder, in authenticating the Usurping Legislature, by which it is asserted, that, whatever may have been the actual force or fraud in its election, the people of Kansas are effectually concluded, and the whole proceeding is placed under formal sanction of law. According to this assumption, complaint is now in vain, and it only remains that Congress should sit and hearken to it, without correcting the wrong, as the ancient tyrant listened and granted no redress to the human moans that issued from the heated brazen bull which subtile cruelty had devised. This I call the Apology of technicality inspired by tyranny. The facts on this head are few and plain. Governor Reeder, after allowing only five days for objections to the returns,—a space of time [288] unreasonably brief in that extensive Territory,—declared a majority of the members of the Council and of the House of Representatives ‘duly elected,’ withheld certificates from certain others, because of satisfactory proof that they were not duly elected, and appointed a day for new elections to supply these vacancies. Afterwards, by formal message, he recognized the Legislature as a legal body, and when he vetoed their act of adjournment to the neighborhood of Missouri, he did it simply on the ground of illegality in such adjournment under the organic law. Now to every assumption founded on these facts there are two satisfactory replies: first, that no certificate of the Governor can do more than authenticate a subsisting legal act, without of itself infusing legality where the essence of legality is not already; and, secondly, that violence or fraud, wherever disclosed, vitiates completely every proceeding. In denying these principles, you place the certificate above the thing certified, and give a perpetual lease to violence and fraud, merely because at an ephemeral moment they are unquestioned. This will not do. Sir, I am no apologist for Governor Reeder. There is sad reason to believe that he went to Kansas originally as tool of the President; but his simple nature, nurtured in the atmosphere of Pennsylvania, revolted at the service required, and he turned from his patron to duty. Grievously did he err in yielding to the Legislature any act of authentication but in some measure he has answered for this error by determined effort since to expose the utter illegality of that body, which he now repudiates entirely. It was said of certain Roman Emperors, who did infinite mischief in their beginnings and infinite good towards their end, that they should never have been born or never died; and I would apply the same to the official life of this Kansas Governor. At all events, I dismiss the Apology founded on his acts, as the utterance of Tyranny by the voice of Law, transcending the declaration of the pedantic judge, in the British Parliament, on the eve of our Revolution, that our fathers, notwithstanding their complaints, were in reality represented in Parliament, inasmuch as their lands, under the original charters, were held ‘in common socage, as of the manor of East Greenwich in Kent,’ which, being duly represented, carried with it all the Colonies. Thus in another age has Tyranny assumed the voice of Law. Next comes the Apology imbecile, which is founded on the alleged want of power in the President to arrest this Crime. It is openly asserted, that, under existing laws, the Chief Magistrate has no authority to interfere in Kansas for this purpose. Such is the broad statement, [289] which, even if correct, furnishes no Apology for any proposed ratification of the Crime, but which is in reality untrue; and this I call the Apology of imbecility. ...
