they know in their own conscience that they
sympathize with the south and are rebels,
have they a right to complain because the
people of the loyal States do not think them
fit persons to hold office? These are the rea-
sons which I wished to assign for my vote;
but I am unwilling further to prolong the
debate.
Mr. CHAMBERS. I have no argument to of-
fer that I can expect to have any influence
upon gentlemen holding such opinions as
have been expressed here to-day; expressed,
I confess, to my surprise; and because ex-
pressed, they have induced me to enter in this
form my protest against the doctrine which
they have taught.
I have heard for the first time upon this
floor an open, avowed, unqualified declara-
tion, a renunciation I should say, of the con-
stitution which it has been the labor of this
house to make us swear was so binding upon
our consciences, claiming such absolute and
almost exclusive allegiance, so absolutely
essential to the perpetuation of the nation, so
necessary to the continuance of the present
form of government, that no argument
against it, no appeal of want of necessity for
it, could prevail for one moment to suspend
the decision of this house by an immense ma-
jority declaring the allegiance is due, in terms
apparently the strongest that the English lan-
guage contains,
This is the constitution which we are now
told they repudiate. It is nothing bat a farce.
The beautiful idea, the splendid idea, of
which some gentlemen are enamored, is that
it is to be trampled under foot during the
long period of the history of this people, or the
State, or the government, which is to last for-
ever, while this parchment, this tabernacle, is
nothing but the outer shell that may be
trampled in the dust. It is a beautiful idea
that it is a tabernacle; but there is a fact in
relation to that which the gentleman from
Cecil (Mr. Pugh) did not seem to recollect;
that on a certain occasion when unholy hands
were laid upon the tabernacle, the conse-
quence was the destruction of those that thus
desecrated it. I do not mean lo predict what
is to be the consequence of this attempt now
to lay unholy hands upon the constitution
which they agree is the tabernacle containing
the soul of this nation. But' as the gentleman
from Cecil ha? referred to the possible period
when those now at enmity with this [ration
may absorb this State, I ask what is to be-
come of his oath, by which he swore alle-
giance to it, and went farther to nay that he
never had opposed it. If Jeff. Davis, accord-
ing to his supposition of possibility, were to
become the President of this State, united
with those at the south, and separated from
the other northern States, which may be con-
ceived as a possibility, this constitution re-
maine; and the doubtful exhibition would
then be presented of gentlemen having placed
39 |
upon the tablet of their inemory the fart that
they have sworn allegiance to Jeff. Davis'
government, that they have further sworn
that they never have opposed it: and they
would lose what the gentleman seems not to
have forgotten was at least the kernel within
the shell—the offices of the State.
1 do not go for any such doctrine, in any
of its forms, its substance, or its consequences.
A remark of mine lie has quoted here—Tempora
mutantur et not mutamur in illis. I do
not apply that to myself. So fir as I know,
I have, in respect to this question, not one
solitary shade of opinion that I have not en-
tertained since I had the capacity to know
what the constitution and the Union was. It
is amisfortune with some of us that we have
not been accustomed to direct our thoughts
to the great question of the elements of gov-
ernment. We are liable to fall into the
strangest things imaginable; and talk about
the Union—tire Union with the constitution
trampled under loot; the Union, and allegi-
ance to the Union as the first duty of every
man, and yet we are not living under the
constitution. In the name of common sense,
what is the use? Gentlemen have not an
adequate conception; they do not seem to
comprehend the first idea of the principle of
the government which unites the varied peo-
ple of the United States into a union, if the
nation pass into a union.
There is not a particle of union, except as
the constitution makes it. Gentlemen may
talk as they please about living in a sate of
war. They may land in the highest terms
the United States army, and they may con-
demn in the grossest terms those in the Confederate
or rebel army. They cannot make«
anything out of government which is to cor-
rect these matters, except the government of
the United States. What government have
we? Does any man doubt that the people
of the United States are the sovereigns of
this country? There does not live such a
man. the re is not a man on this floor who
would contradict that. The people are the
sovereigns. They have the sovereign power
except so far as they have parted with it.
Where have they parted with it? If they
have parted with it, how have they parted
with it, and to whom have they parted with
it? They parted with it when they made
the government of the United States fur the
union of the country. They parted with it
when they mad? the constitution, and no
farther; because they gay themselves that
every right is reserved except it can be found
there passed away. To whom have they
'given it? To the officers elected under their
authority by virtue of the provisions of that
instrument. Talk about onion without a
constitution? You might as well talk about
a house without brick, mortar, wood, or
any other material from which It can be con-
structed ? |
