But we do not apprehend a consummation so devoutly to be deprecated. We believe that the people of Kansas will spurn the bribe and refuse to eat the dirt that is set before them for a banquet. They will reject the insulting proffer with contempt, and fall back upon their reserved right of resistance, passive or active, as their circumstances may advise. They will not be so base as to desert the post of honor they have sought in the great fight for freedom and maintained so long and so well, disappointing and throwing into confusion the distant allies who have stood behind them in their most evil hours, for all the lands that President and Congress have to give. It is, indeed, a momentous crisis for them, and we have faith to believe that they will not be wanting to its demands. The eyes of the lovers of liberty everywhere are earnestly watching to see how they will come out from the ordeal by fire and by gold to which they are subjected. What Boston was in 1775, and Paris in 1789, is Kansas now,--the field on which a great battle for the right is to be fought. Honor or infamy attends the issue of her action in the dilemma in which the crafty malice of her enemies has placed her. If she agree to take the dirty acres which are proffered to her as the price of her integrity, she consents to take the yoke of Slavery upon her neck and not even to attempt to shake herself free from it for six years to come. We know that shuffling Democrats, and even temporizing Republicans, represent that the people, after accepting the Lecompton Constitution, can forthwith summon a Convention and substitute another scheme of government in its stead. But this could be initiated only by a breach of the promise they would have just pledged, and could be carried through only by a revolution. Such a course would be a direct violation of the philosophy of Constitutional Government, which assumes as its fundamental axiom, that Constitutions can be altered only in the way and according to the conditions prescribed in themselves. Such a proceeding would be a _coup d'état_, not as flagitious certainly as that of Bonaparte, but to the full as revolutionary and illegal. And we may be sure that the arm of the United States Government would not be shortened so that it should not interpose and hinder such a defiance of itself and the Power whose instrument it is. With servile and corrupt judges at its beck and a majority in Congress within its purchase, the occasion and means of such an interference would be readily devised and supplied.