an unwilling people, but no reason why the right should not be recognized by the Federal Government as one belonging to the equal privileges and immunities of every citizen of the United States. But the main point of the Senator's argument--and it deserved to be so, because it is the main question now in the public mind--was, what is the meaning of non-intervention? He defined it to be synonymous with squatter sovereignty, or with popular sovereignty.... The Senator and myself do not seem to be getting any nearer together; because the very thing which he describes constitutes the only case in which I would admit the necessity, and, consequently, the propriety of the people acting without authority. If men were cast upon a desert island, the sovereignty of which was unknown, over which no jurisdiction was exercised, they would find themselves necessitated to establish rules which should subsist between themselves; and so the people of California, when the Congress failed to give them a government; when it refused to enact a territorial law; when, paralyzed by the power of contending factions, it left the immigrants to work their own unhappy way; they had a right--a right growing out of the necessity of the case--to make rules for the government of their local affairs. But this was not sovereignty. It was the exercise, between man and man, of a social function necessary to preserve peace in the absence of any controlling power--essential to conserve the relations of person and property. The sovereignty, if it existed in any organization or government of the world, remained there still; and whenever that sovereignty extended itself over them, whether shipwrecked mariners, or adventurous Americans--whether cast off by the sea, or whether finding their weary way across the desert plains which lie west of the Mississippi--whenever the hand of the Government holding sovereign jurisdiction was laid upon them, they became subject; their sovereign control of their own affairs ceased. In our case, the directing hand of the Government is laid upon them at the moment of the enactment of an organic law. Therefore, the very point at which the Senator begins his sovereignty, is the point at which the necessity, and, in my view, the claim ceases. But suppose that a territorial legislature, acting under an organic law, not defining their municipal powers further than has been general in such laws, should pass a law to exclude slave property, would the Senator vote to repeal it? MR. DOUGLAS. I will answer. I would not, because the Democratic party is pledged to non-intervention; because, furthermore, whether such an act is constitutional or not is a judicial question. If it is unconstitutional, the court will so decide, and it will be null and void without repeal. If it is constitutional, the people have a right to pass it. If unconstitutional, it is void, and the court will ascertain the fact; and we pledged our honors to abide the decision....