352 
KANSAS. 
will then be the duty of the assembly to dispose of them. In such an event, 
by donating one hundred and sixty acres as a homestead to each resident of 
five years, and allowing no one person to purchase of the state more than 
one hundred and sixty acres additional, the state would become rapidly 
settled, and at the same time secure a fund for educational and other pur¬ 
poses equal to its necessities. 
The indiscriminate sale of intoxicating drinks in a state like Kansas, 
where are numerous Indian tribes, is productive of much mischief. Some 
tribes within our borders are still uncivilized, and indulge their appetites 
without restraint, while many of the other tribes are equally unfortunate. 
It is a duty we owe to the Indian, that we not only cultivate the most friendly 
intercourse, but that we protect him from injury ; and this subject should 
not be overlooked by the General Assembly. 
The use of intoxicating drinks, as a beverage, impairs the health, morals, 
good order and prosperity, of any community, and the traffic in them is an 
unmitigated evil, and it is for the Legislature in its wisdom to adopt such 
measures as shall best secure the public welfare. 
It will be remembered that a skeleton of a government still exists in our 
midst, under the territorial form, and although this was but the foreshadow¬ 
ing of a new and better covenant, collision with it should be carefully 
guarded against. A territorial government is transient in its nature, only 
waiting the action of the people to form a government of their own. This 
action has been taken by the people of Kansas, and it only remains for the 
General Government to suspend its territorial appropriations, recall its offi¬ 
cers, and admit Kansas into the Union as a sovereign state. 
The reasons why the territorial government should be suspended and 
Kansas admitted into the Union as a state, are various. In the first place, 
it is not a government of the people. The executive and judicial officers are 
imposed upon the people by a distant power, and the officers thus imposed 
are foreign to our soil, and are accountable, not to the people, but to an 
executive two thousand miles distant. American citizens have for a long 
time been accustomed to govern themselves, and to have a voice in the choice 
of their officers ; but, in the territorial government, they not only have no 
voice in choosing some of their officers, but are deprived of a vote for the 
officer who appoints them. 
Again : governments are instituted for the good and protection of the 
governed ; but the territorial government of Kansas has been, and still is, 
an instrument of oppression and tyranny unequalled in the history of our 
republic. The only officers that attempted to administer the laws impar¬ 
tially have been removed, and persons substituted who have aided in our 
subjugation. Such has been the conduct of the officers and the people of a 
neighboring state, either intentionally or otherwise, that Kansas, to-day, is 
without a single law enacted by the people of the territory. Not a man in 
the country will attempt to deny that every election had under the territo- 
