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r prosecuted with a design to annul that law, to subvert the Territorial government, or to put in force in its place a new government, without the consent of Congress, is a flagrant usurpation.
Now the Lecompton Convention was called not merely without the consent of Congress, but against its consent; it was called by and under the arrangements of the Territorial Legislature; it was not the spontaneous act of the people, a large majority of whom condemned the movement and refused to participate in it; and thus, in its inception, it was unlawful. It was neither regularly nor irregularly proper;--the supreme legislature had not acknowledged it; the masses of society had not acknowledged it; and the entire project possessed no other character than that of a factious scheme for perpetuating the power of a few pro-slavery demagogues.
But, if we grant the right of the Territorial Legislature to originate such a movement, the manner in which it was carried into effect would still brand it with the marks of illegality. A census and registry of voters had been provided for in the law authorizing the Convention, as the basis of an apportionment of the delegates, and that provision was not complied with. In nineteen out of the thirty-eight counties no registry was made, and in the others it was imperfectly made. "In some of the counties," according to the evidence of Mr. Stanton, then acting Governor, "the officers were probably deterred and discouraged by the people from their duty of taking the census," (although he adds that he does not know that such was the fact,) "while in others the officers utterly refused to do their duty." "I know," he says, "that the people of some of those counties ardently desired to be represented in the Convention, for they afterwards, under the statements of Governor Walker and myself, that they would probably be admitted, elected delegates and sent them up to the Convention; but they were not admitted to seats." In consequence of this failure or refusal to do their duty, onl