of our fathers, he cannot resist the argument, that, whatever may have been the old system, we must act now in the light of present duties. I repeat, a system good for our fathers may not be good for this hour, which is so full of danger.

Then, again, we are told, with something of indifference, if not of levity, that it is not the duty of the Senate to look after the "bread and butter" of officeholders. This is a familiar way of saying that these small cases are not worthy of the Senate. Not so do I understand our duties. There is no case so small as not to be worthy of the Senate, especially if in this way you can save a citizen from oppression and weaken the power of an oppressor.

Something has been said about the curtailment of the Executive power, and the Senator from Maine [Mr. FESSENDEN] has even argued against the amendment as conferring upon the President additional powers. This is strange. The effect of the amendment is, by clear intendment, to take from the President a large class of nominations and bring them within the control of the Senate. Thus it is obviously a curtailment of Executive power, which I insist has become our bounden duty. The old resolution of the House of Commons, moved by Mr. Dunning, is applicable here: "The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." In this spirit we must put a curb on the President, now maintaining illegitimate power by removals from office.

Mr. President, I have used moderate language, strictly applicable to the question. But it is my duty to remind you how much the public welfare depends upon

courageous counsels. Courage is now the highest wisdom. Do not forget that we stand face to face with an enormous and malignant usurper, through whom the Republic is imperilled, — that Republic which, according to our oaths of office, we are bound to save from all harm. The lines are drawn. On one side is the President, and on the other side is the people of the United States. It is the old pretension of prerogative, to be encountered, I trust, by that same inexorable determination which once lifted England to heroic heights. The present pretension is more outrageous, and its consequences are more deadly; surely the resistance cannot be less complete. An American President must not claim an immunity denied to an English king. In the conflict he has so madly precipitated, I am with the people. In the President I put no trust, but in the people I put infinite trust. Who will not stand with the people?

Here, Sir, I close what I have to say at this time. But before I take my seat, you will pardon me, if I read a brief lesson, which seems written for the hour. The words are as beautiful as emphatic.

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act. anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

These are the words of Abraham Lincoln.1 They are as full of vital force now as when he uttered them. I entreat you not to neglect the lesson. Learn from its teaching how to save our country.

1 Annual Message, December 1, 1862: Executive Documents, 37th Cong. 3d Sess., House, No. 1, p. 23.

Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Reverdy Johnson replied. Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, and Mr. Lane, of Indiana, favored the amendment. Mr. Johnson suggested that the expression of opinion adverse to the President would disqualify a Senator to sit on his impeachment. Mr. Sumner interrupted him to say :

What right have I to know that the President is to be impeached? How can I know it? And let me add, even if I could know it, there can be no reason in that why I should not argue the measure directly before the Senate, and present such considerations as seem to me proper, founded on the misconduct of that officer.

Mr. Sumner here changed his amendment by striking out the limitation of $1,000 and inserting $1,500. He then said:

I make the change in deference to Senators about me, and especially yielding to the earnest argument of the Senator from Vermont [Mr. EDMUNDS], who was so much disturbed by the idea that the Senate would be. called to act upon inspectors. My experience teaches me not to be disturbed at anything. I am willing to act on an inspector or a night watchman; and if I could, I would save him from Executive tyranny. The Senator would leave him a prey, so far as I can understand, for no other reason than because he is an inspector, an officer of inferior dignity, and because, if we embrace all inspectors, we shall have too much to do.

Sir, we are sent to the Senate for work, and especially to surround the citizen with all possible safeguards. The duty of the hour is as I have declared. It ought not to be postponed. Every day of postponement is to my mind a sacrifice. Let us not, then, be deterred even by the humble rank of these officers, or

by their number, but, whether humble or numerous, embrace them within the protecting arms of the Senate.

-

The amendment was rejected, Yeas 16, Nays 21. After further debate, the bill passed the Senate, - Yeas 29, Nays 9. It then passed the House with amendments. To settle the difference between the two Houses, there was a Committee of Conference, when the bill agreed upon passed the Senate, — Yeas 22, Nays 10, — and passed the House, Yeas 112, Nays 41. March 2d, the bill was vetoed, when, notwithstanding the objections of the President, it passed the Senate, Yeas 35, Nays 11, and passed the House, Yeas 138, Nays 40, and thus became a law.1

1 Statutes at Large, Vol. XIV. pp. 430-432.

E

DENUNCIATION OF THE COOLIE TRADE.

RESOLUTION IN THE SENATE, FROM THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, JANUARY 16, 1867.

THE following resolution was reported by Mr. Sumner, who asked the immediate action of the Senate upon it.

W

HEREAS the traffic in laborers transported from China and other Eastern countries, known as the Coolie trade, is odious to the people of the United States as inhuman and immoral;

And whereas it is abhorrent to the spirit of modern international law and policy, which have substantially extirpated the African slave-trade, to permit the establishment in its place of a mode of enslaving men different from the former in little else than the employment of fraud instead of force to make its victims captive: Therefore

Be it resolved, That it is the duty of this Government to give effect to the moral sentiment of the Nation through all its agencies, for the purpose of preventing the further introduction of coolies into this hemisphere or the adjacent islands.

The resolution was adopted.