"If what I have said be correct, then the will of the people of Kansas is to be found in the action of her Constitutional Convention. It is immaterial whether it is the will of a majority of the people of Kansas _now_, or not. The convention was, or might have been, elected by a majority of the people of Kansas. A convention, elected in April, may well frame a constitution that would not be agreeable to a majority of the people of a new State, rapidly filling up, in the succeeding January; and if legislatures are to be allowed to put to vote the acts of a convention, and have them annulled by a subsequent influx of immigrants, there is no finality. If you were to send back the Lecompton Constitution, and another was to be framed, in the slow way in which we do public business in this country, before it would reach Congress and be passed, perhaps the majority would be turned the other way. Whenever you go outside of the regular forms of law and constitutions to seek for the will of the people, you are wandering in a wilderness--a wilderness of thorns. "If this was a minority constitution, I do not know that that would be an objection to it. Constitutions are made for minorities. Perhaps minorities ought to have the right to make constitutions, for they are administered by majorities. The Constitution of this government was made by a minority, and as late as 1840 a minority had it in their hands, and could have altered or abolished it; for, in 1840, six out of the twenty-six States of the Union held the numerical majority. In all countries and in all time, it is well understood that the numerical majority of the people could, if they chose, exercise the sovereignty of the country; but for want of intelligence, and for want of leaders, they have never yet been able successfully to combine and form a stable popular government. They have often attempted it, but it has always turned out, instead of a popular sovereignty, a _populace_ sovereignty; and demagogues, placing themselves upon the movement, have invariably led them into military despotism.