Abolitionists from Ohio will come and steal them; but if you send them over without shackles they will not have them on any account." [Laughter.]

What a mockery is all this sympathy with the negro, with his hard estate, with having him a free man equal to the white man, and yet northern gentlemen will no more allow him to go into their states than they would allow a pestilence to come in if they could prevent it! They are willing to force them off on somebody else-to force Oregon to take them. I appeal to the senator from Massachusetts, now, are you willing to have the free negroes of the South quartered off on Massachusetts? I may ask that question of the senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale], who is about to speak. I see it working in him, and he will get it out directly. [Laughter.] I ask him whether he would be willing to see all the free negroes of Mississippi and Louisiana quartered off on New Hampshire? I dare say he will answer, with his usual frankness, that he would not. Where, then, are they to stay? Where, then, are they to stay? You insist on sending them to Oregon, forcing them on another people against their will, but you are not willing to take them yourselves. We are willing to keep our part of them until they choose to go somewhere else voluntarily, and when they go, we insist that they shall have the right to go.

1 say again, I rather think I shall vote against the bill; but if gentlemen on the other side will say that they are willing to take Oregon as a free state, and make no opposition to it, I do not know but that I may get over my little scruples, and vote for it; but I am not going to force on myself another free state. I am not going to beg you to take another free state. If you ask it, and ask it genteelly and cleverly, I think we shall let you have it; but we will not beg you to take it.

INCREASE OF THE NAVY.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JUNE 7, 1858, ON THE INCREASE OF THE NAVY.

I THINK, sir, the Senate will bear me witness that I do not belong to the category to which the senator from Tennessee has alluded-the warmaking portion of the Senate. Since this English difficulty has existed, I have not said one word about it. I have purposely abstained from doing so; and therefore no part of the remarks on that point, of the senator from Tennessee, has the slightest reference to me. I shall vote for this amendment with great pleasure. I should vote for it with more pleasure if it proposed to build twenty instead of ten ships. As to the size of the ships, I am unable to say, now, whether they are a proper size or not, and should be just as little able to say it the next year or the year following. The capacity of ships must necessarily be determined upon by those who have the command of them, and those under whose supervision they are to be placed. It is impossible that I can ever understand what sized ships are best for naval purposes. I assume, necessarily, that the naval committee, charged with the settlement of that question, the Secretary of the Navy, and officers of the navy, who

have been called into consultation, have properly considered that subject, and have made a proper recommendation. I feel that your navy is too small; that there is a necessity for increasing it—a necessity which has existed for years, and exists in greater force now than at any former period. If the Secretary of the Navy, the naval committee, and the naval commanders, have made a false or improper recommendation as to the size of the ships, the responsibility must be upon them. If I could be better instructed at the end of six months than I am now, I might say, let us wait a little while; but I shall not be. At the opening of the next session you will have to rely on the same sources of information on which you rely now, because each individual senator for himself can have but very slight information on a point of this kind, and he would not like to risk his own individual opinion against the opinion of the Secretary, the committee, and the officers of the navy.

The senator from Virginia says, that at another time, when the treasury is full, he will be willing to vote for this supply. When will the treasury be fuller than it is now? No man can tell. When can you borrow upon better terms than you can borrow now? Your credit, instead of rising, in case you get into difficulties with Great Britain, will fall, and fall rapidly. Instead of being able to borrow at three or four per cent. then, you will have to borrow at ten, fifteen, or twenty per cent., and perhaps at a higher rate. You now borrow because you choose to do it. Get into a war with England, and you will borrow because you are forced to do it; and a forced loan, a loan when you are compelled to have it, is always obtained upon harsh terms. This is the only object for which I would agree to borrow money to any extent. I would not borrow money in any large sum to keep up your army. In the proper administration of your government, you have very little use for an army. About all the service it performs in time of peace is to watch Indians, and I very much agree with my venerable friend from Texas [Mr. Houston], that if you let the Indians alone, they want very little watching. But your flag, according to the declaration of gentlemen all around the chamber, has been insulted, again and again, on the sea. We have heard the senator from Tennessee recapitulate the simple facts that war speeches have been made on both sides of the chamber, speeches calculated to stir up the blood of young America, speeches calculated to excite English spirit, if she be acting upon a system, speeches calculated to produce an issue, to bring the two governments face to face that you must either have a fight or have a back out, on one side or the other. English courage never has receded from a conflict, nor has the courage of America. I hope that at the last hour we are not to shrink from the conflict, and do it on the miserable plea that, after all the boasting we have had here, we are unprepared for war. Do gentlemen calculate that their speeches are to be read in the British Parliament, by British statesmen, and no notice taken of them? Do gentlemen calculate that Great Britain is to take down her flag, and not to stand up to any national position she has assumed? If they make such calculation, then, let me say, history does not justify their making it. If they are quite assured that the recent transactions in the Gulf of Mexico are unauthorized, then their speeches were unworthy of senators. I supposed that those speeches were made because there was a settled conviction on the minds of senators that Great Britain did

authorize these outrages, that we were talking, not to the poor creature who commands the Styx or the Buzzard, but that we were talking to Lord Derby and his council, that we were talking to the queen upon the throne. If we were, if that was the view of the subject, then senators ought to consider that the words uttered here are not light and frivolous words, and will not be so considered and treated by the world, but that these bold words ought to be backed by bold and manly actions.

Mr. President, I know very well that, in case of a conflict with Great Britain, the great burden is to fall on that section of the country from which I come, and upon no portion of it more heavily than upon my own state. Mine is a cotton state; purely a cotton-producing state. We sell scarcely a penny's worth of anything else than that great staple, and Great Britain is our best customer; but I say before the Senate today, and before the world, that, sooner than allow my flag to be insulted, I would have my people carry every bale of their cotton to New Orleans and Mobile, to make barricades, and, if necessary, I would put the torch to it, and burn up every fibre of it, without one sixpence of insurance from any quarter. With me, sir, the defence of the flag is the first great duty of an American patriot, and I would defend it, cost what it may. But I should talk idly if I said I was for a war with Great Britain. I want no war with her. I want her to respect the rights of these states united; I want her to pay proper deference to the glorious Lanner of the stars and stripes. If she refused that, I would not stop an instant to count the cost in dollars and cents-nay, sir, not in blood and life. I endorse what my friend from Tennessee has said, that these violent speeches, unbacked by acts, amount to little. When they are carried across the Atlantic, and are read there, British statesmen cannot fail to see that this is mere bravado; that you will talk valiantly to the populace about war, but when it comes to preparation you do not make the preparation.

It is confessed, now, that you have not an available naval force to vindicate your flag in the Gulf of Mexico. Who does not know that that is true? How often has it been stated here, without contradiction, that the British guns in the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico outnumber yours more than two to one, and that you have not an additional force to send there? Yet, in the face of these facts, gentlemen have talked of war, of blowing Great Britain out of the sea, capturing her vessels, and bringing them into port, holding them as hostages, and all that! If you mean to meet an issue with a government like Britain, you have a very different game before you; and it is high time you commenced preparing for the conflict. These war speeches have satisfied me that there is danger, imminent danger; that, if you vindicate the honor of your flag, you will have war. I do not say that you will have it absolutely, but that there is danger of it; and, in the face of that danger, I will provide for the contingency in advance of its coming. Let us have the twelve sloops. I repeat, again, I am sorry the committee did not propose twenty. Twenty would not be half enough. Better borrow the money now, when you can get it at three or four per cent., than stumble headlong into war, and borrow at twelve, fourteen, fifteen, or perhaps twenty, or even a higher percentage.

But even in a time of profound peace you need the vessels. If there was no menacing anywhere, I might say that, inasmuch as there is no

pressing necessity for it, I will not go for an increase of the navy; but in view of the present danger I am for the increase, cost what it may. I think it will have a wholesome effect on diplomacy. While I would not undertake to menace a power like Great Britain, because she is not a power to be menaced or bullied, yet I think if she saw that you were backing up your bold words by equally bold and valiant deeds, she would not be quite so likely to be so overbearing and haughty as a nation as we know her to be as she would be-if you simply talk and do nothing. I am for backing up all we have said by equally bold deeds. I am not finding fault with gentlemen now for talking. It is all well enough. Up to this hour I have taken no part in it; but I choose to put my declaration on the record not only in favor of vindicating the flag on this question in words, but in favor of preparing to do it by deeds. These sloops, if you build them, will not encumber your navy. Your navy is not, it never has been, large enough. Your coast has been extended. If you had no further service for it, your coast has more than doubled within the last fifteen years; there is a greater amount of coastwise trade to guard on both sides of the continent. It requires a greater expenditure; and if there be grumbling among the people about the expenditure, the answer is easy: "You insisted upon the addition to the country; you knew, when you were getting all this coast, that it would need defence; if you are a sensible and thinking people, you must have seen it would involve an expenditure to protect it, and keep it, and maintain it." I am for increasing the navy from ten sloops up to twenty, and I would vote for forty.

FRANKING PRIVILEGE.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES JUNE 14, 1858, ON THE ABOLITION OF THE FRANKING PRIVILEGE.

I SHALL Vote against this report for several reasons. In the first place, I see nothing in the idea of objecting to general legislation on an appropriation bill. How often during this session, and every other session of Congress, has it been done by both Houses? This is an objection urged to a measure which is distasteful to gentlemen, just as the same argument has been urged a hundred times before; and it is only urged by those to whom the measure is distasteful. If it were pleasant to them they would swallow it in both Houses, of course without a word; but it is an argument lugged in by the ears and shaken in the face of the Senate, every time anything is proposed which chances to be a little distasteful to gentlemen. If we could get back to the original principle, and put nothing but appropriations on appropriation bills, I should be very willing to stand upon that principle now and through all time to come; but we have not done it, and we are not going to do it.

Then what is there in the argument about prolonging the session? Suppose the House of Representatives do bring the session abruptly to a close by the loss of this bill: the President has the power, and he will exercise it, to tell them to come back, take their seats, and discharge

the duty for which they are paid. The session can as well last to the first Monday of December, as come abruptly to a close when the clock points to the hour of six this evening; and it will not cost the government a sixpence to prolong it to that time. I protest against the argument, that gentlemen who are paid by the year to transact the public business must hasten abruptly to close the session of Congress, and that, upon the declaration that they cannot stay any longer, we are to give up important measures. Are public and private rights to be trampled under foot because gentlemen do not choose to stay here, and do what they are paid to do? Such an argument rather inclines me to stand upon the Senate amendments, let the bill fall, and let the Presi dent call gentlemen back, and teach them their duty by the strong arm of constitutional power.

Then it is said: "these are small points; we can give them up; it will not cost anything to give them up." A small point, sir, not to increase the rate of postage, when your Post Office Department is costing you more than two million dollars over its revenue!

Mr. TOOMBS. I will mention to my friend that there are $3,500,000 appropriated in this very bill, out of the treasury, independent of what goes through the Navy Department.

Mr. BROWN. I was not very accurate about the figures. I knew it was a large sum. Gentlemen speak of this as a small thing; they say it amounts to little. You are going into the market to borrow money. You borrowed $20,000,000 at the opening of the session, and now you are to borrow $20,000,000 at the close. There is an executive message on the table, telling you that these loans can by no possibility keep you going until beyond the first of January next; and yet you refuse to increase the rates of postage, when your post office establishment is thrown on the treasury at an annual expense of $3,500,000 above its revenue. I think it is rather a large point. I do not think $3,500,000 are thus to be lightly thrown aside.

Now let me ask you, Mr. President, how is a large portion of the deficiency in the post office revenue created? It is on account of the franking privilege, to which gentlemen adhere with the tenacity of a dying man, and which it seems they will, under no circumstances, agree to surrender. They would sacrifice an important bill, compel the President to reconvene Congress, do anything, rather than give up this sacred privilege, as I suppose they regard it-a privilege which, to most members of Congress, is a burden. But, sir, I ask again, whether the franking privilege does not create a large portion of the deficiency in the post office revenues? I assert that it does, and I will tell you why. Within the last eighteen months, more than eighteen hundred tons of free matter have passed through the Washington City Post Office from members of Congress alone-enough to load a large-sized ship, enough to load two ordinary steamboats. This free matter has gone out; and where has it gone to? So long as it is upon your railroads and upon your four-horse stage coach lines, it gets along, I grant you, without much additional cost; but it gets to a point where it must necessarily be packed on horseback, and it accumulates there to the extent of five or six hundred pounds. It does not take a great many of your eight large volumes of Pacific Railroad surveys, Congressional Globes, and other heavy books, to amount to a large weight. What