Members to serve in Parliament is a high infringement of the liberties of the subject, a manifest violation of the freedom of elections, and an open defiance of the laws and constitution of this kingdom.' The persons concerned in this having been ordered to attend the House, received, on their knees, a very severe reprimand from the speaker."-"Parliament History,' vol. ix., page 326.

Can it be possible that a principle of common law-the right of the people to have an election free from the presence of troops so dear to Englishmen one hundred years ago, is not equally dear to their descendants at the present day?

Mr. President, it will require some one now living to write accurately the history of these times, for the future historian will be slow to believe that there was any basis on which to rest such an inquiry in the Congress of the United States during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Why, then, should not the law of 1865 be altered in the manner proposed by this bill ?

It is said that Mr. Lincoln signed it, and the inference is that it would reflect on his memory to change it. To say the least, this is a pretty strong presumption from such a predicate. No man loved Mr. Lincoln better or honors his memory more than I do, nor had any one greater opportunities to learn the constitution of his mind and character and his habits of thought. He was large-hearted, wiser than those associated with him, full of sympathy for struggling humanity, without malice, with charity for erring man, loving his whole country with a deep devotion, and intensely anxious to save it. Believing as I do that he was raised up by Providence for the great crisis of the War of the Rebellion, I have equal belief, had he lived, we would have been spared much of the strife of these latter days, and that we now would be on the highroad to prosperity. Such a man, hating all forms of oppression, and deeply imbued with the principle that induced the men of 1776 to resist the stamp tax, would never have willingly intrusted power to any one, unless war was flagrant, to send troops to oversee an election.

Why, then, I repeat, should not the proposed measure pass? There is no rebellion, nor any threatened, nor any domestic uproar anywhere. The Union is cemented by the blood that was shed in defense of its integrity; the laws are obeyed North and South, East and West, and our only real differences relate to the administration of the internal affairs of the Government. By the constitution of the human mind, there will of necessity be diverse

opinions among the people on the best way to manage their internal affairs, and Congress meets periodically to legislate for the people and to represent their views on the questions dividing them. But surely these differences, be they great or small, afford no justification for a departure from any of the principles that underlie republican government. If they do, the charter of our liberties will soon be frittered away.

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

(1817-1865)

s A representative of Maryland who had opposed forcing issues on the abolition of slavery, Henry Winter Davis became one of the most prominent figures in national politics when in February, 1861, President Buchanan being still in office, he denounced the administration and demanded the use of any amount of force necessary to preserve "the unity of territory we have labored through three generations and spent millions to create and establish." This argument and others related to it, as he summarized them, were decisive against the idea of allowing the "erring sisters" to go in peace. The stand thus taken by Mr. Davis was maintained throughout the war. He reported the first "plan of reconstruction," proposed by the Republicans in 1864, and in his speech on that occasion summarized in a few sentences more clearly perhaps than they are presented elsewhere, the constitutional difficulties which were overcome in adopting the "Civil War amendments." He was born at Annapolis, August 16th, 1817, and died at Baltimore, December 30th, 1865. His biographers sometimes represent that at his first election to Congress in 1854 he was already a Republican, but in 1857 he made a speech denouncing that party as sectional, and declaring the "American" party to be the only really national party in existence. In 1859, when he voted for the Republican candidate for Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Maryland legislature adopted resolutions declaring that he had forfeited the confidence of the people. He replied in a speech on the floor of the House that the Maryland legislature could take their message back to their masters, for only to their masters the people was he responsible. He was re-elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican in 1862 and served until his death.

REASONS FOR REFUSING TO PART COMPANY WITH THE SOUTH

(From a Speech on the State of the Union, Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 7th, 1861)

Mr. Speaker:

E ARE at the end of the insane revel of partisan license,

WR which, for thirty years, has, in the United States, worn

the mask of government. We are about to close the masquerade by the dance of death. The nations of the world look anxiously to see if the people, ere they tread that measure, will come to themselves.

Yet in the early youth of our national life we are already exhausted by premature excesses. The corruption of our political maxims has relaxed the tone of public morals and degraded the public authorities from the terror to the accomplices of evildoers. Platforms for fools-plunder for thieves-offices for service-power for ambition-unity in these essentials-diversity in the immaterial matters of policy and legislation-charity for every frailty-the voice of the people is the voice of Godthese maxims have sunk into the public mind, have presided at the administration of public affairs, have almost effaced the very idea of public duty. The Government under their disastrous influence has gradually ceased to fertilize the fields of domestic and useful legislation, and pours itself, like an impetuous torrent, along the barren ravine of party and sectional strife. It has been shorn of every prerogative that wore the austere aspect of authority and power.

The President, no longer preceded by the fasces and the ax, the emblems of supreme authority,-greets every popular clamor with wreathed smiles and gracious condescension, is degraded to preside in the palace of the nation over the distribution of spoils among wrangling victors, dedicates his great powers to forge or find arms to perpetuate partisan warfare at the expense of the public peace. The original ideas of the Constitution have faded from men's minds. That the United States is a government entitled to respect and command; that the Constitution furnishes a remedy for every grievance and a mode of redress for every wrong; that the States are limited within their spheres, are charged with no duties to each other, and bear no relation to the other States excepting through their common

head, the Government of the United States; that those in authority alone are charged with power to repress public disorder, and compose the public discontents, restrain the conduct of the people and of the States within the barriers of the Constitutionthese salutary principles have faded from the popular heart with the great interests which the Government is charged to protect, and has gradually allowed to escape from its grasp. Congress has ceased to regulate commerce, to protect domestic industry, to encourage our commercial marine, to regulate the currency, to promote internal commerce by internal improvements—almost every power useful to the people in its exercise has been denied and abandoned, or so limited in its exercise as to be useless; its whole activity has been dedicated to expansion abroad and acquiring and retaining power at home, till men have forgotten that the Union is a blessing, and that they owe to the United States allegiance paramount to that to their respective States.

The consequence of this demoralization is that States, without regard to the Federal Government, assume to stand face to face and wage their own quarrels, to adjust their own difficulties, to impute to each other every wrong, to insist that individual States shall remedy every grievance, and they denounce failure to do so as cause of civil war between the States; and as if the Constitution were silent and dead, and the power of the Union utterly inadequate to keep the peace between them, unconstitutional commissioners flit from State to State, or assemble at the national capital to counsel peace or instigate war. Sir, these are the causes which lie at the bottom of the present dangers. These causes, which have rendered them possible and made them serious, must be removed before they can ever be permanently cured. They shake the fabric of our national Government. It is to this fearful demoralization of the Government and the people that we must ascribe the disastrous defections which now perplex us with the fear of change in all that constituted our greatness. The operation of the Government has been withdrawn from the great public interests, in order that competing parties might not be embarrassed in the struggle for power by diversities of opinion upon questions of policy; and the public mind, in that struggle, has been exclusively turned on the slavery question, which no interest required to be touched by any department of this Government. On that subject there are widely marked diversities of opinion and interest in the different