Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1858 — PLAIN TALK. [ARTICLE]

PLAIN TALK.

H on. Lewis Wallac§, of Crawfordsville, who has heretofore been a sort of milk-and-water Anti-Lecompton Democrat, now blowing hot, and now blowing cold, seems to .have repented of his vasciHating course, and writes the following inanly letter to the Crawfordville Review: “Mr. Bowen: In your paper last week you suggested me as a proper person lo make the ensuing race for Congress on the Democratic side. The article has been received thlfcughout the county as a regular announcement of my candidacy before the Convention, and has subjected in* to interrogatories not always pleasant or timely. Let me say to the public that lam not -seeking the nomination, and have no intention of being a candidate in any event.

“To end further questions in connection with the subject, let me also say that I am now opposed to Lecompton, as I have been from thebeginning; and that, while I thought Lecompton seriously objectionable, as a departure from Democratic principles, I am of opinion that English's Compromise, at .present the law of the land, is a swindle without apology, an outrage upon the people of Kansas, an insult to tin- Whole North, and,a deliberate violation of equality as between States and sections. More titan that, sir, as a Northern man of Free-State sentiment, and possessed of ordinary feeling and pride, I resent that act as amounting to the open and formal degradation by Congress of myselTand every other Northern citizen. It provides in sheet that, if Kansas, with a present population of 40,000, will accept the Lecompton (slave) Constitution, she shall have millions of acres of land and be at once, by proclamation, admitted a State of the Union; but, if she reject Lecompton, she will not have any land, and shall not make another Constitution nor be admitted as a State until she has 9.>,000 inhabitants. 11l oilier words, it establishes the principle, hitherto unheard, that 40,000 inhabitants are enough to make a slave State;

whereas to make a free State 93,000 are not onlv held necessary, but absolutely requiVed; und to guard against the possibility of mistake or iinpoMtion us to the 93,000, a census must be taken and certified up to Congress prior to the admission. I deny that in point,ot political rights one Southern man is superior to tvvo Northern men. I deny his superiority in that respect to anyone of them. Yet the English bill establishes that, in Congressional eyes, two Northern men, like Mr. English, lack a fraction of being equal politically to one Mr. Stephens, of/Georgia. The-three-fifths rule, dor purposes ol representation, is perfectly satisfactory as against Mr. Toombs’ slaves; but a one-half rule, for purposes of admission into the Union, as against the freemen of the North, is an inequality and wrong too infamous to be subscribed, too unjust to be endured. I am opposed to any kind of interference by Congress; if she must interfere, however, let it not he in the questionable shape of a bribe on one hand and a penalty on the other. “The above are not all my objections to English’s bill; nevertheless, I hope they will prove sufficient for ‘inquiring friends.’ “Respectfully, Lewis Wallace. “Crawfordville, May 6,1]858.”