Nor will I deign to dwell on one other argument, which, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, undertakes to secure for the people in the Territories the wicked power--sometimes, by confusion of terms, called “right”--to enslave their fellow-men: as if this pretension was not crushed at once by the Declaration of Independence, when it announced that all governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed”; and as if anywhere within the jurisdiction of the Constitution, which contains no sentence, phrase, or word sanctioning this outrage, and which carefully excludes the idea of property in man, while it surrounds all persons with the highest safeguards of a citizen, such pretension could exist. Whatever it may be elsewhere, Popular Sovereignty within the sphere of the Constitution has its limitations. Claiming for all the largest liberty of a true Civilization, it compresses all within the constraints of Justice; nor does it allow any man to assert a right to do what he pleases, except when he pleases to do right. As well within the Territories attempt to make a king as attempt to make a slave. Beyond all doubt, no majority can be permitted to pass on the question, whether fellow-men shall be bought and sold like cattle. There are rights which cannot be “voted up” or “voted down,” according to phrases of the Senator from Illinois [Mr. DOUGLAS], for they are above all votes. The very act of voting upon the question of reducing men to bondage is a heinous wrong, for it assumes that we may do unto others what we would not have them do unto us. But this pretension,--rejected alike by every Slave-Master and by every lover of Freedom,-- “Where I behold a factious band agree To call it Freedom, when themselves are free,”[136]-- proceeding originally from vain effort to avoid the impending question between Freedom and Slavery,--assuming a delusive phrase of Freedom as a cloak for Slavery,--speaking with the voice of Jacob, while its hands are the hands of Esau,--and, by plausible nickname, enabling politicians sometimes to deceive the public, and sometimes even to deceive themselves,--may be dismissed with other kindred pretensions for Slavery; while the Senator from Illinois [Mr. DOUGLAS], who, if not inventor, has been its boldest defender, will learn that Slave-Masters, for whom he has done so much, cannot afford to be generous,--that their gratitude is founded on what they expect, and not on what they receive,--and that, having its root in desire rather than in fruition, it necessarily withers and dies with the power to serve them. The Senator, revolving these things, may confess the difficulty of his position, and perhaps “remember Milo’s end, Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend.”[137]