and I have received the same answer from every one of them.... They say if they allowed a negative vote the constitution would have been voted down by an overwhelming majority, and hence the fellows shall not be allowed to vote at all." "Will you force it on them against their will," he demanded, "simply because they would have voted it down if you had consulted them? If you will, are you going to force it upon them under the plea of leaving them perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way? Is that the mode in which I am called upon to carry out the principle of self-government and popular sovereignty in the Territories?" It is no answer, he argued, that the constitution is unobjectionable. "You have no right to force an unexceptionable constitution on a people." The pro-slavery clause was not the offense in the constitution, to his mind. "If Kansas wants a slave-State constitution she has a right to it, if she wants a free-State constitution she has a right to it. It is none of my business which way the slavery clause is decided. I care not whether it is voted up or down." The whole affair looked to him "like a system of trickery and jugglery to defeat the fair expression of the will of the people."[635] The vehemence of his utterance had now carried Douglas perhaps farther than he had meant to go.[636] He paused to plead for a fair policy which would redeem party pledges: "Ignore Lecompton, ignore Topeka; treat both those party movements as irregular and void; pass a fair bill--the one that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit; have a fair election--and you will have peace in the Democratic party, and peace throughout the country, in ninety days. The people want a fair vote. They never will be satisfied without it. They never should be satisfied without a fair vote on their Constitution....