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not take note of the want of form. We do not care whether the petition is precisely addressed according to the forms of law, whether it opens and concludes properly, or not. We look to the substance of the thing; but what will the court do? What do we authorize them to do? Why, to make their own rules. What do courts do? Where is the private citizen in this country who can get his case fairly into court, and fairly out of it, without the aid of an attorney? Are not attorneys required in all courts? Has not the ingenuity of legislators in the several states been racked for years, seeking to dispense with attorneys before a court? And what has it all resulted in? Why, in imposing additional burdens upon the claimant. Where a private party goes into court, he must go with the aid of legal counsel, and so this court will require the same thing, whatever may be the pretensions or honest convictions of gentlemen.

PRIVATEER BRIG GENERAL ARMSTRONG.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 26, 1855, ON THE CLAIM OF THE OWNERS OF THE PRIVATEER BRIG GENERAL ARMSTRONG, DESTROYED IN THE PORT OF FAYAL, PORTUGAL, IN VIOLATION OF THE NEUTRALITY OF THAT PORT.

MR. PRESIDENT: As I voted for this claim before, and intend to do so again, I desire in a few words, to assign the reasons which govern that

vote.

The facts in the early history of this case seem to be well understood, and about them there is little or no controversy, here or anywhere else. That the brig General Armstrong was attacked by a greatly superior force, in a neutral port, where she made a most signal defence; one which reflected high honor upon the nation, and upon all the parties engaged on our side of the controversy, seems to be everywhere admitted. That she was attacked in violation of the law of nations, seems never to have been disputed at any time. Through all the changes of administration, there has not been found a Secretary of State, or a President who has not insisted that the attack was in violation of law, and that an obligation was thereby imposed upon Portugal to indemnify the claimants. Portugal resisted, and our government continued to insist upon satisfaction until we were brought, under the administration of the late General Taylor, almost to the very verge of a conflict with that government, growing out of this claim.

Portugal has been discharged; and the question arises, by whose agency? It is admitted that the Secretary of State of the United States agreed to an arbitration of the case; and it is nowhere insisted that he consulted the clients of the government-for I shall so treat them-as to whether the case should be thus submitted or not. Assuming that he had the right to do so, he exercised it, and submitted the case to arbitration without their consent. The submission was to the late Presi dent of the Republic of France; but before he rendered his decision he became the Emperor of that country.

Now, sir, I am not going into any minute investigation of each particular fact in the progress of this case; but I shall endeavor to touch on those facts which are most prominent, and, in my judgment, ought to govern our decision. Up to the point where we now are there seems to be no controversy about the facts; but the senator from Tennessee asks whether it was not within the knowledge of these claimants that the case was submitted, and whether they protested against it? Well, sir, I apprehend that, if an attorney employed to prosecute a suit decides it out of the ordinary course of his profession, he will render himself liable if the money is lost; in other words, if I employ you, Mr. President, or any other gentleman, as a lawyer, to prosecute my case, and you submit it to arbitration without my consent, you render yourself liable to me for whatever damage I may sustain thereby. But it is said that you may protect yourself by a charge that I had knowledge of the fact that there had been such a submission, and that I did not protest against it. If this be not a violation of one of the established rules of law, it comes so exceedingly close to it that I hardly perceive the difference. an attempt to force on the claimants here the proof of a negative. the government gave them notice, it is the duty of the government to show that the notice was given. If they had notice, let those who take the affirmative of that proposition come forward with the proof, and not impose on the claimants the necessity of proving a negative-that they did not consent.

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My own clear judgment is, that, the government of Portugal having been originally liable, and our government having discharged that liability by its own mismanagement of the case, has obliged itself to make indemnity to these claimants; and upon that broad principle I shall place my vote. I will not follow the lawyers through all the little technicalities of the case, seeking a little technical objection here, and another one somewhere else, by which we may discharge ourselves from an honest obligation to these parties. Sir, who is the claimant, and what were the services rendered by him in the beginning of this claim? As gallant a soldier as ever drew a blade in defence of his country; a man who, by universal consent, fought the most gallant action that was ever fought upon the bosom of the waters, in proportion to the numbers / employed. When before, sir, in the history of naval warfare has it been known that a little brig, with five or six guns and ninety men, could stand out in noble resistance against more than five times its strength, and come out of the conflict with only two men killed, when there lay dead on the decks of the enemy more than twenty times that number? When this transaction first occurred, if history speaks truly, it electrified every American heart from one extremity of the Union to the other. I dare say, if, at that time, the gallant old captain who stood upon the deck of the Armstrong in this conflict, had come to his government, and asked for payment for his ship, it would have been rendered, and there would have been no cavilling about it. The government would have said: "Here, my gallant son, take the money, and we will demand a return of it from Portugal; but so far as you are concerned, your ship shall not be sacrificed unlawfully in the defence of country, and we stand by and permit it to be done without making an effort to save you and your men from ruin." In such a case as this, sir, I cannot persuade myself to sink down to the mere technicalities of the

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lawyer, for there is too much in the history of the case, too much in the gallantry of the great and good old man who prefers the claim, for me to descend to those little particulars.

Sir, Captain Reid is not known to this country alone as the commander of the armed brig in this conflict. Fix your eye as you come to the Capitol upon that flag which waves over us to-day, and ask who is its author? Sir, the author of that flag, the man who designed it, is the claimant in this case. It was under his humble roof, by the hands of his wife and daughters, that the first flag that ever floated over this Capitol was manufactured. In every way he has manifested his devotion to his country, his deep and lasting devotion to America, to her institutions, and to her honor; not only toiling in season but out of season in her defence; and shall we, the representatives of the states, stand here today cavilling upon little miserable technicalities of the law, such as lawyers resort to in courts of law and courts of equity, to avoid the payment of honest claims? I have great respect, not only personally, for my friend from Michigan [Mr. Stuart], but I have the greatest respect for his astuteness as a lawyer; and if he were in court to-day pleading for some man who was trying to resist the payment of an honest claim, I should applaud his technicalities and say they were well taken. His was a lawyer-like speech. I am not prepared to say that, according to the strict rules of technical law, it was not a correct speech. As between A and B-A trying to avoid the payment of an honest debt on a technicality-I think the speech would have been well delivered; but I think it was out of place in the Senate of the United States for a great nation to attempt to get rid of an honest claim, preferred by a highsouled and patriotic citizen, who has shed his blood in defence of the country, who has reflected glory upon his flag. For myself, sir, I repeat, I am satisfied this government has made itself liable, in law, for the payment of the claim; but whether liable or not, I am going to vote on the broad principle that old Reid fought the battle, that somebody was responsible for the loss of his ship, that that responsibility has been removed from the party who was clearly liable, and that we ought to make up the damage.

LETTER AGAINST KNOW-NOTHINGISM.

NEWTOWN, Hinds Co., Miss., April 12, 1855. DEAR SIR-Yours of March 21st, inviting an expression of my views in reference to the new political organization called " Know-Nothings," has been received. It has all along been my intention to avail myself of some suitable occasion to express my opinions of this Order. None arose while Congress was in session, and the limits of a letter, such as I am now called upon to write, hardly afford scope enough for a full expression and vindication of the views entertained by me. I content myself for the present, therefore, with a glance at some of the more prominent points of the issues presented.

Personally, I know nothing of the "Know-Nothings." Taking it for granted that common fame presents the Order in its true colors, it is a

secret political organization gotten up for the ostensible purpose of excluding Roman Catholics from office, and foreign born persons from office and the right of voting. If I misstate the object of the party it is because, in the absence of any public avowal of its purposes, I am compelled to rely for information upon common rumor.

I am opposed to all secret political organizations. The laws should be made, construed, and administered in the open face of day. From the first suggestion that gives them shape, to the final act of their complete execution, all should be public as the sun at noon-day. The history of the Jacobins, the Star Chamber, and the Inquisition, give us many and painful proofs that liberty is a by-word, and life a mockery, when the laws are either made, adjudged, or executed in private. It will be said, I know, that the new Order does not propose to legislate in secret. This is an unworthy evasion. If it is agreed in secret to pass particular laws, and men are chosen in secret, and secretly bound by oaths to enact them, of what avail is it that they go through the forms of legislation in public. The Jacobins consulted and agreed in private, but they went through the forms of legislation in public. The result was that they deluged France in blood.

If we consent to pass laws in secret or through secret agencies, how long will it be before we shall be called on to revive the Star Chamber, and pass judgment in secret? And when this is done, will not the Inquisition shake the dust from its implements of death, and claim the right to execute in secret?

Thus may be revived in republican America the appalling and bloody tragedies that blacken the pages of English, French, and Spanish history.

The secrecy observed by the Know-Nothings cannot be excused on the plea that all political parties hold secret caucuses. Whigs and Democrats avow their party associations-inscribe their principles on the banners they unfurl, and publicly-in the newspapers, on the stump, and everywhere else, vindicate their principles. They consult privately as to the means of reaching a conclusion; but the conclusion once reached, it is openly proclaimed. Not so with the Know-Nothings; they do not avow their party associations. As a party, they avow no principles before the public; and of course enter into no defence of their principles in the newspapers, on the stump, or elsewhere. They consult in secret, and when conclusions are reached they are made known only to the initiated. There is, therefore, no parallel between a Whig or Democratic caucus and a Know-Nothing lodge.

A vain effort has been made to excuse the secrecy of the KnowNothings, by citing the example of Free Masons, Odd Fellows, and other benevolent associations. Things to be compared must have some sort of resemblance to each other. Free Mason and Odd Fellow associations are purely charitable. Know-Nothings are exclusively political. We have the highest Christian example for dispensing charities in secret. But the same high authority teaches us to govern openly.

I am American enough to prefer my own countrymen to any other, and Protestant enough to prefer a follower of Luther to a disciple of Loyola. But my love of country will for ever keep me out of any association that (if fame speaks truly) binds its members by terrible oaths to sustain American Protestants for office, though they may be fools,

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knaves, or traitors, in preference to Irish or German Catholics, though they may have genius, honor, and the highest evidences of patriotic devotion to our country and its institutions. All other things being equal, I should certainly prefer an American Protestant to an Irish Catholic. But I will take no oath nor come under any party obligation that may compel me to sustain a fool or a knave, in preference to a man of sense and honor. While I assume no censorship over other men's thoughts or actions, I am free to say for myself alone, that such oaths and such obligations are, to my mind, palpably at war with man's highest and most sacred duty to his country.

To my mind the secret feature of the Know-Nothing organization, though paramount, is not its only objectionable feature. A party that is worth joining and worth sustaining ought to have some permanent, palpable, and lasting principles-some principles that can be carried into useful and active practice in the administration of the government. Have the Know-Nothings such principles? To my comprehension, as at present advised, they have not-can they, for example, by any system of legislation, short of a radical change in our Federal and State Constitutions, exclude Roman Catholics from the right of suffrage or the right of holding office. Our enlightened and liberal Constitution, as we all know, makes no invidious discrimination against Catholics, but extends the ægis of its protection over them and all religionists, assuring them of their right to worship God after the dictates of their own conscience. I am a progressive Democrat, but I have not progressed far enough to make war on the guaranties of the Constitution, to gratify a hatred of the Pope, or to undertake, by stealth, to accomplish that which the Constitution has forbidden me to do openly.

I am for the Constitution as it is written, and among the last of its guaranties that I would disturb is that in reference to religious freedom. How any man, schooled in our institutions and accustomed to the freedom of religious worship, which he sees every day, can desire any change, surpasses my comprehension. Theology is not my profession, and ĺ leave to the learned D.D.'s the discussion of the relative merits of the several Christian denominations, gently hinting that such discussions suit the pulpit better than the bar room. And as they should be conducted for the honor of God and the glory of his church, the secrecy of a Know-Nothing lodge may, I think, be safely dispensed with. I may be mistaken, but if there is anything to be gained, of a practical nature, by the projected war of the Know-Nothings against the Catholics, it has eluded my observation.

The idea of excluding foreign born persons from office and the right of voting, is not quite so visionary, but practically it amounts to but very little more. It is a palpable but common error, that the right to vote is inseparable from citizenship. Many people appear to think that none but native or adopted citizens can vote in this country. This is a great mistake. Whatever may have been the individual opinions of men who framed the Federal Constitution, they practically ignored all control by Congress over the ballot box. They very properly gave to Congress the sole right to make a citizen of a foreign born person, but they wisely left with the states the power to regulate the right of voting. Each state, for itself and within its own limits, declares who shall vote. In the exercise of this right, Virginia and other states have imposed pro

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