Surely, Sir, if ever there was occasion for the exercise of this right, the time had come in Kansas. The people there were subjugated by a horde of foreign invaders, and brought under a tyrannical code of revolting barbarity, while among them property and life were exposed to shameless assaults which flaunted at noonday, and to reptile abuses which crawled in the darkness of night. _Self-defence is the first law of Nature_; and unless this law is temporarily silenced, as all other law is silenced there, you cannot condemn the proceedings in Kansas. Here, Sir, is unquestionable authority, _in itself an overwhelming law_, which belongs to all countries and times,--which is the same in Kansas as at Athens and Rome,--which is now, and will be hereafter, as it was in other days,--in presence of which Acts of Congress and Constitutions are powerless as the voice of man against the thunder which rolls through the sky,--which declares itself coëval with life,--whose very breath is life itself; and now, in the last resort, do I place all these proceedings under this supreme safeguard, which you will assail in vain. Any opposition must be founded on absolute perversion of facts, or perversion of fundamental principles, which no speeches can uphold, though surpassing in numbers the myriad piles sunk in the mud to sustain the Dutch Stadthouse at Amsterdam. * * * * * Thus, on every ground of precedent, whether as regards population or forms of proceeding,--also, on the vital principle of American Institutions,--and, lastly, on the supreme law of self-defence, do I now invoke the power of Congress to admit Kansas at once and without hesitation into the Union. “New States _may_ be admitted by the Congress into this Union”: such are the words of the Constitution. If you hesitate for want of precedent, then do I appeal to the great principle of American Institutions. If, forgetting the origin of the Republic, you turn away from this principle, then, in the name of human nature, trampled down and oppressed, but aroused to just self-defence, do I plead for the exercise of this power. Do not hearken, I pray you, to the propositions of Tyranny and Folly; do not be ensnared by that other proposition of the Senator from Illinois [Mr. DOUGLAS], where is the horrid root of Injustice and Civil War; but apply gladly, and at once, the True Remedy, where are Justice and Peace. * * * * *