of this glorious new doctrine which you have propagated on all sides. That comes of your parting with the wise usages and the wise institutions of your fathers; and so it will ever be, the moment you abandon those well-established, constitutional rules fixed by the founders of the Republic. You have abandoned the great highways of the past-the good macadamized roads made for you-every mile-stone of which was red with revolutionary blood; you have strayed away from them, and wandered after wills-o'-the-wisp into swamps and by-paths. All that the Republican party wish to do, is to stand up and call you back as a mother calls to her lost child, and put you on the safe old road again. They call upon you to come out of the wilderness; to quit the shedding of each other's blood in fratricidal war for the right to have this or that law; to let the Congress of the United States, who represent the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, of the peaceful emigrants who have gone into the Territories, consider what is best for their children and friends. But abandon, as you have abandoned, the institutions of your Fathers, and there will be neither peace nor progress in the Territories. There will be strife here, and civil war there, and wild confusion will reign supreme. The wise prophet of Israel, after he came down from the mountain with the law in his hand, and found his brother Aaron worhiping a golden calf which he had made, was so angry that he threw down the tables of the law, and broke them. He determined that that wicked people should never have an opportunity of worshiping any more golden calves; he made all the women bring in their trinkets and golden ornaments, and melted them down in one mass. Let us, in the same spirit, bring in these miserable idols of ours; sacrifice them on the common altar of our country; shake hands, forget and forgive. And now, before I sit down, let me ask again, are the destinies of this mighty Republic to turn on the publication of a pamphlet ? You know that the gentleman whom we have nominated will make a just and impartial Speaker. Concede that for once. Concede that we will have to elect by a plurality. I think that, if we could, we ought to elect by a majority. There is something symmetrical in it. You say, he should be elected by a majority, because, in the happening of two or three very remote contingencies, he may become President of the United States. But, as I said yesterday, no President or Vice-President will ever be found, both amiable enough to die and let the Speaker take that place. We will not consider that contin gency. If we cannot agree upon one man, is it possible, in the name of the American people, that we cannot find some man in this Congress who is fit to preside over this House? It has been stated that I said that I would vote for Mr. Sherman till the last trump should sound. I his mind. David, King of Israel, repented of what he said, when he remarked, "I have said, in my haste, that all men are liars." concede that fact, when I state now that I am willing to vote for any one almost who can be elected. If this protracted contest means any. thing, we cannot elect a Republican; we cannot elect a Lecompton Democrat; we cannot elect an anti-Lecompton Democrat; and though there may be as many shades of party as Jacob had stripes in his cat. tle-I do not know how many-it seems that we cannot elect any one of them. I know of but one man in this House who does not belong to any party, and I have thought that perhaps we might unite upon him. The gentleman from New York [MR. HORACE F. CLARK] belongs to no party; he will not act with any party; does not love any party; does not hate any party; does not care for any party. [Great laughter]. Why not elect him? Mr. Clerk, I believe that I am abusing my priviles here. [Cries of "Go on!"] I hope the observations which I have made, Mr. Clerk, forced from me without any of that preparation which is usual, may not be entirely worthless. Whether we consider this ever-recurring question of Slavery as resting within our unrestricted discretion, or whether we regard it as fixed and limited by constitutional law—in either aspect, with good sense, guided by true patriotism-there is nothing to be feared. The way through the future is, in my judgment, open, clear and plain. We cannot be so weak as to give way to childish fears, or sink into lethargy and despair. On the contrary, let us "gird up our loins" to the work before us; for upon us this duty is devolved. We cannot escape from it if we would. Let us, above all, preserve our Constitution inviolate, and the Union which it created unbroken. By the lights they give us, with the aids of an enlightened religion, and an ever-improving Christian philosophy, let us march onward and onward in the great highway of social progress. Let us always keep in the advancing car of that progressour book of Constitutions and our Bible. Like the Jews of old, let the ark of the covenant be advanced to the front in our march. With these to guide us, I feel the proud assurance that our free prin ciples will take their way through all coming time; and before them I do believe that the cloven-footed altars of oppression, all over the world, will fall down, as Dagon of old fell down, and was shivered to pieces in the presence of the ark of the living God. But if we halt in this great exodus of the nations; if we are broken into inconsiderable fragments, and ultimately dispersed, through our follies of this day, what imagination can compass the frightful enormity of our crime! What would the world say of this unpardonable sin? Rather than this, we should pray the kind Father of all, even His wicked children, to visit us with the last and worst of all the afflictions that fall on sin and sinful man. Better for us would it be that the fruitful earth should be smitten for a season with barrenness, and become dry dust, and refuse its annual fruits; better that the heavens for a time should become brass, and the ear of God deaf to our prayers; better that Famine, with her cold and skinny fingers, should lay hold upon the throats of our wives and children; better that God should commission the Angel of Destruction to go forth over the land, scattering pestilence and death from his dusky wing, than that we should prove faithless to our trust, and by that means our light should be quenched, our liberties destroyed, and all our bright hopes die out in that night which knows no coming dawn. ON THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE. The second session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress met in December, 1860, after the election but before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. The distracted state of the country immediately engaged the attention of both branches. In the House a motion was made, "That so much of the President's message as relates to the present perilous condition of the country, be referred to a special committee of one from each State." This was adopted by a vote of-ayes, 145; noes, 38. The committee was appointed by the Speaker; it consisted of thirty-three members, with Mr. CORWIN as chairman, and it embraced some of the most eminent men in the nation. On January 14th, 1861, Mr. CORWIN presented to the House the report of the committee, which consisted of a series of resolutions and a joint resolution to amend the constitution of the United States; an act for the admission of New Mexico into the Union; and an amendment to the fugitive slave law, and the law relating to fugitives from justice. The report of " the committee of thirty-three" being under consideration on January 21st, 1861, Mr. CORWIN spoke as follows: Mr. SPEAKER: It is not my intention to occupy the time of the House this morning with the submission to them of remarks upon many of the topics which are naturally associated with the great questions before us. I shall have discharged the duty which I feel incumbent upon me as one of the committee of thirty-three, when I have presented the subjects which have been introduced, with a few very brief explanations of the motives which have induced the committee to recommend the adoption of the resolutions and bills which accompany their report. It is about thirty years since I first took a seat in this House as a representative from the Congressional district in Ohio in which I now reside. Two years after that time I was called upon to act in my representative character upon a subject very nearly akin to, if not identical with, that which now widely distracts the public mind from one end of this vastly-extended republic to the other. At the time to which I now allude, a portion of the southern people of this country, led on then, as now, by the State of South Carolina, had declared, in a convention of their people, that the then existing laws levying duties upon foreign merchandise, in its judgment being unconstitutional, had absolved that State from its obligations to the Union. She did not then actually attempt to secede. I believe that was not the term then used to signify the action of that State. She proposed to strike down the laws of the United States within her limits; and this was denominated nullification. This movement of South Carolina met with little sympathy at that time from the other southern States of the Union. Other causes for the present distraction of our Union are now assigned; but the same mode of accomplishing it is adopted substantially. It was then alleged that a supposed unconstitutional act of Congress was to be adjudged of and decided upon in the last resort by any and every State in the Union that might choose to assume jurisdiction of the question. South Carolina had determined for herself, and her decision was then announced, that this act, levying duties on foreign merchandise, was unconstitutional, and, in its nature and in its tendency oppressive to the people of that section of the Union. Therefore she would withdraw herself from the Union, and establish an independent republic of her own. The doctrine now asserted in some of the States is, that an unconstitutional act, passed by the Legislature of a State, is of itself a ground for a withdrawal from the Union whenever any State shall choose to consider such law a violation of any provision contained in our Federal Constitution. I little thought, when that unhappy difficulty which so much excited the public mind from 1831 to 1833 was composed, that at the near termination of my natural life, and the still nearer approach to the close of political service, I should ever be called upon again to give a vote or utter a word which would have any application to a question of such fearful import. But, sir, I believe the pages of history will show that in every stage of human progress, from the beginning of the time when man began to be an occupant of this earth, his restless and unquiet nature, while it has prompted him to great improvements, has often led him to forsake the present good for some vague hope, never to be realized, in the future. Any one who had read the history of one of the greatest of the empires of the world, especially of its decline and its dispersion into fragrants, might have well suspected that at some period in the history of this confederated republic a tendency to fly off from the center of attraction would, sooner or later, be exhibited in some of the States; and that from that cause, as the makers of the Constitution, some of them did believe, we might expect, at some day |