English Bill
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- For the New Zealand politician, see Bill English
The English Bill was an offer made by the United States Congress to Kansas Territory. Kansas was offered some millions of acres of public lands in exchange for accepting the Lecompton Constitution.
The English Bill was not a bribe to the degree that it has usually been considered to be, inasmuch as it reduced the grant of land demanded by the Lecompton Ordinance from 23,500,000 to 3,500,000 acres (95,100 to 14,200 km²), and offered only the normal cession to new states. But this grant of 3,500,000 acres (14,200 km²) was conditioned on the acceptance of the Lecompton Constitution, and Congress made no promise of any grant if that Constitution were not adopted. The bill was introduced by William Hayden English (1822-1896), a Democratic representative in Congress from 1853 to 1861.
On the August 21, 1858, by a vote of 11,300 to 1,788, Kansas resisted this temptation.
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- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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