a thing was possible; or they may so amend it as to make it but one dollar from tea and coffee; or they may reject the bill altogether.

MR. PETERS. May not the Senate add other articles?

If we refer to the practice of the two houses, doubtless the Senate has usually, without any question having been raised by the House, added other articles. And I do not say that this would be trenching on our privileges on a general revenue bill. But the bill on which these amendments were made was in no sense a general revenue bill. It was an act relating exclusively to a single article. There was nothing, either in the title or in the bill itself, to indicate that it was intended as a general revenue bill. Furthermore, it was well known that the proper committee of the House were preparing a general bill, in which the whole subject was to be opened for consideration. Considering all the circumstances of the case, and particularly the fact that on the single clause of our bill relating to but one article of taxation the Senate has ingrafted a general bill, embracing not only the tariff generally, but our whole system of internal taxation, it is clear that the ground we now take is not questionable ground, and it becomes the undoubted duty of the House to stand on its rights, and refuse to consider this bill.

MR. PETERS. Then allow me to ask the gentleman if the rule is a fixed one, or one in the discretion of the House.

I will say this: it is a fixed rule. If the House has ever slept on its rights it ought not to be now concluded from asserting them because of its past neglect; and if there ever was a time in the history of the government when this House should reclaim and assert its rights, it is now and here, when, on the naked lay figure of a two-line bill, the Senate proposes to impose the entire revenue system of the government. If the bill from the Senate now on your table, Mr. Speaker, be recognized by us, we shall have surrendered absolutely, not only the letter, but the spirit of the rule hitherto adopted, and with it our exclusive privilege under the Constitution.

If it be said that this resolution, which the House is asked to adopt, is an unusual one, I answer that the circumstances under which it is proposed are equally unusual. It is well known that the Senate, even in the recess, have been delib

erately at work preparing the tariff bill; and they have only been waiting the slight opportunity afforded by the two lines. which the House sent them, to initiate and take control of our tariff legislation. It is this course of procedure which the House is called upon to resist.

THE KU-KLUX ACT.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, APRIL 4, 1871.

THE Fourteenth Amendment had no sooner become a part of the Constitution, than Congress began to legislate with a view of carrying out its provisions. Attention may be drawn to the "Act to enforce the Right of Citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of the Union, and for other Purposes," approved May 31, 1870; also to the Act amendatory of said Act, approved February 28, 1871.

March 23, 1871, President Grant sent to the Senate and House of Representatives this message:

"A condition of affairs now exists in some States of the Union, rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collection of the revenue dangerous. The proof that such a condition of affairs exists in some localities is now before the Senate. That the power to correct these evils is beyond the control of the State authorities, I do not doubt; that the power of the Executive of the United States, acting within the limits of existing laws, is sufficient for present emergencies, is not clear. Therefore, I urgently recommend such legislation as in the judgment of Congress shall effectually secure life, liberty, and property, and the enforcement of law, in all parts of the United States. It may be expedient to provide that such law as shall be passed in pursuance of this recommendation shall expire at the end of the next session of Congress."

This message was referred in the House to a select committee of nine. March 28, Mr. Samuel Shellabarger, of Ohio, reported from this committee a "Bill to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other Purposes." This bill led to an extended discussion, in both houses, of outrages in the South, the final issue of which was the law popularly known as "The KuKlux Act," approved April 20. Mr. Garfield's speech was upon the bill as reported by Mr. Shellabarger. His criticisms, and those of other Republican members who shared his general views, led to very material

modifications of the bill, Mr. Shellabarger himself leading the way by offering an important amendment the day after Mr. Garfield's speech was delivered. To follow all the crooks and turns in the history of the Ku-Klux Act, would here be both impossible and out of place. A summary of leading points, and the test votes, will be found in McPherson's "Handbook of Politics," for 1872, pp. 85-91. It is particularly deserving of mention, however, that the martial-law features of the original bill, so severely criticised by Mr. Garfield, were struck out.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”— Constitution, Art. XIV. Sec. 1.

MR

R. SPEAKER, -I am not able to understand the mental organization of the man who can consider this bill, and the subject of which it treats, as free from very great difficulties. He must be a man of very moderate abilities, whose ignorance is bliss, or a man of transcendent genius, whom no difficulties can daunt and whose clear vision no cloud can obscure.

The distinguished gentleman who introduced the bill from the committee very appropriately said that it requires us to enter upon unexplored territory. That territory, Mr. Speaker, is the neutral ground of all political philosophy, — the neutral ground for which rival theories have been struggling in all ages. There are two ideas so utterly antagonistic that when, in any nation, either has gained absolute and complete possession of that neutral ground, the ruin of that nation has invariably followed. The one is that despotism which swallows and absorbs all power in a single central government; the other is that extreme doctrine of local sovereignty which makes nationality impossible, and resolves a general government into anarchy and chaos. It makes but little difference as to the final result which of these ideas drives the other from the field; in either case, ruin follows. The result exhibited by the one was seen in the United Netherlands, which Madison, in the Federalist,2 describes as characterized by "imbecility in the government; discord among the provinces; foreign influence and indignities; a 1 Mr. Shellabarger.

2 No. 20.

precarious existence in peace, and peculiar calamities from war." This is a fitting description of all nations who have carried the doctrine of local self-government so far as to exclude the doctrine of nationality. They were not nations, but mere leagues bound together by common consent, ready to fall to pieces at the demand of any refractory member. The opposing idea was never better illustrated than when Louis XIV. entered the French Assembly, booted and spurred, and girded with the sword of ancestral kings, and said to the deputies of France, "The state? I am the state!"

Between these opposite and extreme theories of government, the people have been tossed from century to century; and it has been only when these ideas have been in reasonable equipoise, when this neutral ground has been held in joint occupancy, and usurped by neither, that popular liberty and national life have been possible. How many striking illustrations of this do we see in the history of France! The despotism of Louis XIV. followed by a reign of terror, when liberty had run mad and France was a vast scene of blood and ruin! We see it again in our day. Only a few years ago the theory of personal government had placed in the hands of Napoleon III. absolute and irresponsible power. The communes of France were crushed, and local liberty existed no longer. Then followed Sedan and the rest. On the first day of last month, when France was trying to rebuild her ruined government, when the Prussian cannon had scarcely ceased thundering against the walls of Paris, a deputy of France rose in the National Assembly and moved, as the first step toward the safety of his country, that a committee of thirty should be chosen, to be called the Committee of Decentralization. But it was too late to save France from the fearful reaction from despotism. The news comes to us, under the sea, that on Saturday last the cry was ringing through France, "Death to the priests, and death to the rich!" and the swords of the citizens of that new republic are now wet with each other's blood.

The records of time show no nobler or wiser work done by human hands than that of our fathers when they framed this republic. Beginning in a wilderness world, they wrought unfettered by precedent, untrammelled by custom, unawed by kings or dynasties. With the history of other nations before