New States MAY be admitted. Out of that little word _may_ comes the power, broadly and fully, without any limitation founded on population or preliminary forms, provided the State is not within the jurisdiction of another State, nor formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States. Kansas is not within the _legal_ jurisdiction of another State, although the laws of Missouri are tyrannically extended over her; nor is Kansas formed by the junction of two or more States; and therefore Kansas _may_ be admitted by Congress into the Union, without regard to population or preliminary forms. You cannot deny the power, without obliterating this clause. The Senator from New York was right in rejecting all appeal to precedents as entirely irrelevant; for the power invoked is clear and express in the Constitution, which is above all precedent. But since precedent is enlisted, let us look at precedent. It is objected that the _population_ of Kansas is not sufficient for a State; and this objection is sustained by under-reckoning the numbers there, and exaggerating the numbers required by precedent. In the absence of any recent census, it is impossible to do more than approximate to the actual population; but, from careful inquiry of the best sources, I am led to place it now at 50,000, though I observe that a prudent authority, the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” puts it as high as 60,000; and while I speak, this remarkable population, fed by fresh emigration, is outstripping even these calculations. Nor can there be doubt, that, before the assent of Congress can be perfected in the ordinary course of legislation, this population will swell to the large number of 93,420, required in the bill of the Senator from Illinois. _But, in making this number the condition of the admission of Kansas, you set up an extraordinary standard._ There is nothing out of which it can be derived, from the beginning to the end of the precedents. Going back to the days of the Continental Congress, you find that in 1784 it was declared that 20,000 free inhabitants in a Territory might “establish a permanent Constitution and Government for themselves”;[99] and though this number was afterwards, in the Ordinance of 1787 for the Northwestern Territory, raised to 60,000, yet the power was left in Congress, and subsequently exercised in more than one instance, to constitute a State with a smaller number. Out of all the new States, only Maine, Wisconsin, and Texas contained, at the time of admission into the Union, so large a population as is required in Kansas,--while no less than _fifteen_ new States have been admitted with a smaller population, as will appear by the following list, which is the result of research, showing the number of “free inhabitants” in these States at the date of the proceedings which ended in their admission.