Though bearing the name of Mr. Douglas, and now peddled through the country by him, this contrivance is not of his invention. It comes from an older head. It first showed itself in the Nicholson Letter of 1847, by which General Cass, as Presidential candidate, sought to avoid the Wilmot Proviso. Laborious, studious, exemplary in private life, and fertile in pretexts, this venerable character has afforded the formula by which men have voted for Slavery, while making professions for Freedom. He is author of the artifice--rejected by every Slave-Master, and rejected by every lover of Freedom, whose eyes are open--which, under the nickname of Squatter Sovereignty, has been the device of doughfaces, enabling them sometimes to deceive the public and sometimes even to deceive themselves. Owing to the peculiar condition of opinion at that time, not yet stiffened against the compromise of Human Rights, his very vacillation put him in harmony with the public, and gave him a commanding position. Once for the Wilmot Proviso, which asserted the power of Congress over the Territories, and then for a pretended Popular Sovereignty, which denied this power, he became the pendulum between Freedom and Slavery, and, thus swinging, imparted motion to a sham Democracy. The device next showed itself on the passage of the Kansas and Nebraska Bill; and here it became a trick, as appears by open confession of one of the parties to it,--and a trick it has continued ever since. It was proposed to repeal the old Prohibition of Slavery in the Missouri Territory, established as part of the Missouri Compromise. But instead of doing this openly and precisely, by simple words of repeal, language was invented to mystify the whole question. Then appeared that “little stump speech injected in the belly of the bill,” according to Colonel Benton, declaring that the intent was to leave the people “perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” As in the gray of the morning the fatal bill containing these words passed, General Cass, rising from his seat,--I remember well the scene,--exclaimed, “This is the triumph of Squatter Sovereignty!” The old Prohibition of Slavery was overthrown, and his Nicholson Letter was vindicated.