Excerpt from Speech of Hon. Jacob Collamer, of Vermont, on Affairs in Kansas: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, April 3 and 4, 1856 I have made this last remark for a reason which I will state. If a man were to take our Consti tution, and should close the volume ofour history, and should obliterate our legislation, and read that book without these lights, I think he would come to the conclusion that there never was such a thing as slavery in the country. There is nothing in the instrument that would lead him to dream of its existence. I know that it is some what difficult to ascertain how much we should learn from the reading of any particular paper or book, without the lights of experience around us. It is as difficult, perhaps, as for a man now to determine how much he would know in relation' to the moral attributes of the Deity if he had not the light of revelation around him. The truth is he has that light around him, and it is difficult for him to judge how much he would be able to discover if he had it not. We have the lights of our ex erience; we have the lessons of our politica history; and it is difficult for us to read the Constitution without those lights. Still I think it would be practicable to a considerable extent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.