AN APPEAL ON THE QUESTION OF A
CONVENTION.

(By Morris Birkbeck.)

FELLOW CITIZENS--The framers of our social compact, profiting by the experience of all nations, to secure from light and capricious changes those institutions of government, which, on account of their superior importance, are coupled with first principles and embodied in the constitution, did most wisely ordain that a solemn measure of a convention should not be proposed to the people by any authority short of a majority of two-thirds of the general assembly. We are invited to vote on this subject, at the next election, by a very different sort of majority from that intended by the constitution, and framed after a new fashion, which it will be right for us to examine before we give it our countenance. The history of the business appears to be, shortly, this:

Certain members of that body, anxious to introduce a forbidden system amongst us, formed themselves into a junto or caucus soon after the commencement of the session, and offered to other members their votes in favor of any proposition which those members had an interest in carrying, in consideration of their pledging themselves to support the measure of a convention. By the accession of these, their first victims, the caucus became, in fact, the legislature, as, by comprising a majority of both houses, it was capable of carrying every question, that one excepted. Others of your representatives, who had not, as yet, bartered away their independence, soon discovered that they were completely at the mercy of the junto; and, in order to recover the means of serving their constituents on those points of local interest, which, when combined, form the general weal, suffered themselves, one by one, to be brought over, until the faction had acquired nearly two-thirds of the whole number of votes, the strength requisite for carrying their favorite measure without the accomplishment of which, they declared, they would not quit Vandalia.

They repeatedly tried their strength by preparatory resolutions, and at length, on the fifth of February, brought forward the main question, but it was decided against them by a majority of two. They were not, however, to be so baffled; they carried a vote of re-consideration, and the resolution was laid upon the table.

On the eleventh of February, having gained over the deficient votes by means which it might seem invidious to detail, the resolution was

again brought forward, and again lost through the defection of a member, who, on the former occasion, had voted for it. Notwithstanding this second decision, they persevered in their purpose.

One of the party, although in the constitutional minority on the last division, again moved a reconsideration of the question. The speaker declared the motion to be out of order, because the mover was in the minority. They attempted to over-rule the decision of the speaker, by an appeal to the house, but the chair was supported by a majority of three.

Here, it might be supposed, the question was finally decided, and would have been allowed to rest; but it proved otherwise. On the succeeding day the vote confirming the speaker's decision was reversed, and the motion for re-consideration, made by one of the minority, carried; and to extinguish the vote of the defaulter, and create a favorable one in the room of it, as no such vote could be found in the house, they had recourse to a proceeding the most unjust, and impudently tyrannical, that ever, as I believe, disgraced the legislature of a free country: By an arbitrary resolution, in direct violation of law, they expelled one of your representatives, who had been established in his seat by the decision of the house, and introduced in his room, a man favorable to their views, who had been declared, by the same decision, not to be a representative. Having accomplished this, they brought forward the main question the third time, and carried it by the vote of this man, whom they created a member for the express purpose, at the close of the session.

Now, fellow citizens! I ask you how you feel under this sort of legislation? and the reply I seem to hear, from one end of the State to the other, is this: "We have been insulted and abused by a base faction; but, unless it be by the appointment of such men for our representatives, we are not, as yet, degraded. The infamy rests, at present, on the heads of these persons-and there let it remain! If we should give our sanction to their conduct, by voting for a convention, at their instigation-then, indeed. would disgrace cover the country, and to be a citizen of Illinois will be no honorable distinction."

This question having been thus forced upon the people, in defiance of law and constitution, our course, in regard to it, is plain: We must, on the present occasion, vote against a convention, or become accomplices in these nefarious doings. There are, no doubt, various particulars in our institutions which require amendment, as, in the early stages of a government, will naturally be the case. It is new. and has hardly had a fair trial. At a proper season, when our honest representatives, after due deliberation, shall, by a constitutional majority, have resolved to propose it to us, let us then have a convention. The defects of the present system are not of a nature so urgent as to forbid a short delay, and we shall be better qualified for a revision of the constitution from longer experience. A change in the county commissioners' courts--the removal of the seat of government, and annual sessions of the legislature- are, I believe, the chief amendments talked of. If the objections to the thing, as now proposed, had no existence, it would be well for us to count the cost of a

convention, and to consider, if, in the exhausted, and more than exhausted, the insolvent, state of the treasury, it would be discreet to add that expense to our present pecuniary embarrassment. In a few years it is probable we may better afford it; but, just now, the charge of the remedy, I do think, would be felt by the people a greater grievance than all the diseases complained of.

But the disease in the legislature demands our immediate attention; for there the interests of the public have been bought and sold in the face of day; the law of elections, and the established rules of legislative proceedings, have been set at nought, in order to thrust this question upon us, Such a scene of base intrigue was never before exhibited under a representative government, as prevailed at Vandalia through the last session.

It cannot be for the interest or the honour of the citizens of Illinois that their affairs should be so conducted. Even if the object were beneficial, and should accord with our wishes, to receive it through so impure a channel, would be unworthy of republicans. When we require a convention, we can have one, according to the constitution, through a sound and respectable legislature. We are not reduced to the humiliation of obtaining it by intrigue and chicanery, or of accepting it from hands which have violated our rights in the legislative assembly, their proper sanctuary! Though nugatory in point of law, as having been illegally and corruptly carried, this measure will become a precedent for similar abuses, if it receive the sanction of the people. Should the mines of Golconda be offered to us on these terms, we should reject the offer with disdain. Such are, or ought to be, our reflections at this important crisis.

Injustice, committed by a private citizen, is bounded in its mischief by the nature of the act, and the perpetrator, being an object of contempt, is not likely to prejudice public morals by the influence of example. Enormities are committed by despots in the wantonness of power, and the people submit until they acquire the means of avenging themselves; but, as they detest the tyrant, and abhor tyranny, their sense of right may not be vitiated by the crimes of their rulers. But when a domineering faction, in a representative government, commits injustice, covering its deeds with the forms of legal enactment, a people, conscious of these proceedings, and submitting to them because they may chance to accord with their inclination or supposed interest, bows its neck to the yoke, and is unworthy to rank among republicans;--because, from that time, their government ceases to be a representative government. One faction, having accomplished its purpose, gives place to another, and that to a third- until it sinks into despotism of the meanest character; a tyranny of knaves, without honour or principle, or public spirit! What that is worth preserving can remain alive under such a system?

The end justifies the means," say these lawless politicians, but it is a villainous plea, and would end in the destruction of our liberties. Would to heaven that were all the end they aim at! To it we should soon apply a remedy. Slavery is their avowed object-accursed slavery! Doubly accursed--in those who inflict it, and in its miserable victims! When once introduced. for this. no remedy would be

found. My fellow citizens! for the sake of our posterity-in the name of religion, in the name of virtue-I implore you to act uprightly at the ensuing election: Let us save our country! not from the evil of political corruption merely, but from this, the concentration of all the evils which afflict humanity.

It is to you who have expended your labor and capital on permanent improvements, and considered yourselves settled for life in this State, with your families around you that I have appealed thus earnestly, and I trust not in vain. There are others, and these form a large majority of the advocates of this scheme, who, like birds of passage, belonging to no country in particular, look only to the interest of the moment, and are prepared to vote for a convention as an inlet to slavery, under the notion that it might advance the price of land, and enable them to sell their farms to advantage, and move off. And there are persons-as I have heard with sorrow and indignationwhose talents and standing entitle them to consideration, who are availing themselves of this topic, so important to our future wellbeing, merely as an engine of temporary, party politics. Supposing (falsely as I believe and hope) that popularity is on the side of slavery, they take that side, and, regardless of its calamitous consequences, they can just to gain an advantage over rivals, who are supporting the cause of freedom-prostitute their influence to the ruin of their country! Such, I am told, is the position taken by some of the most prominent and zealous supporters of a convention; and thus, fellow citizens, may our dearest interests be trifled with by disappointed ambition, which, unless it can govern, will not hesitate to destroy!

From a sentiment of clemency or of kindness, I forbear naming either these individuals, or the leaders of the faction in the legislature. I arraign their proceedings at the bar of the public; but my controversy is with the measures, not with the men. This pamphlet, should it be circulated beyond the sphere of our contest, or survive its decision, shall not be the instrument of stamping with ignominy the memory of any of my fellow citizens. There may be extenuating circumstances infirmity of judgment, deeply-rooted prejudice, human weakness, in short, of various shapes, moral and intellectual, to save from absolute baseness of intention the projectors of enormous mischief. It is enough for us to see the actions in their true character; we will leave the agents to settle the account of motives with their own conscience, and proceed to consider what would be the consequences of their success.

In regard to the price of land, no advantage could ensue from the admission of slavery. You might open the market to purchasers from the slave states. but, by so doing, you would exclude all from every state and every country who are averse to slavery. The owners of negroes, who may be inclined to change their abode, have stronger inducements towards the southern states of Alabama, Misssisippi, and Louisiana than to ours. This is confirmed by the experience of Missouri where the price of land is said to be even lower than with us and the difficulty of selling at least equal. The want of money, also, prevails equally in the neighbouring slave states, and is quite sufficient to prevent the sale of their own lands, which is necessary, in