The Kansas Free-State Party

The National Era, which is decidedly the ablest, because the most rational and least passionate, anti-Slavery journal in the United States, thus speaks of the duty of the Free-State men in Kansas, in regard to the popular vote upon the State Constitution:

“If the Constitution on whole is a good one, and by their vote they can make it a free one, and so organize Kansas as a Free State, that vote ought not to be withheld, merely because the Convention was illegitimate, or the offspring of a minority vote; or because the Free-State Party had already agreed upon a constitution; or because it was resolved to stamp with perpetual reprobation the party which had achieved ascendancy by fraud, and continued it by oppression. A vote making the Constitution free, and organizing Kansas as a Free State under it, would prove the subversion of that party- something better and more important than simple reprobation. No such motives as these, we say, should control the Free-State men, independently of other considerations.”

It seems to be generally conceded that, in the main, and with exception of the Slavery clause,, the new Constitution of Kansas is not obnoxious to any very serious objection. Its provisions are substantially such as are embodied in all the more recent Constitutions of the other States. At all events, whatever defects it may contain, can be so readily remedied by the action of the People, after they once obtain the sovereignty over their own affairs which the admission of the State would give them, that it seems unwise to throw away the opportunity of voting.