consider the conviction an expiation, and the execution a martyrdom, is too common at this day to excite surprise in any case. Even with the ministers of religion, the ascent to the scaffold is Jacob's ladder-the gallows is the very gate of heaven; and the old formula of pax et misericordia is changed for one in the spirit, if not in the words, of Edgeworth, "Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven !"

I dwell on these matters the more, because they have been made the occasion of exaggerated inferences and the proofs of unfounded fears, which a more thorough or a cooler contemplation of the manifestations of thought and feeling in our free American society will dispel. I seek for signs of peace. I will explore every region for ground of returning confidence. I think there is no ground for the excitement which has prevailed. I think the longer gentlemen look at the facts, they will the more surely see that their feelings led them to extremes which they will not be inclined to repeat.

In this spirit, I feel sure they will now be inclined to accept the formal declaration of the gentleman from Ohio, who was the first candidate of the Northern opposition for speaker, at its full value and scope:

"I say now, that there is not a single question agitating the public mind; not a single topic on which there can be sectional jealousy or sectional controversy, unless gentlemen on the other side of the House thrust such subjects on us. I repeat, not a single question."

He so spoke while a candidate; and had he said exactly the opposite, there is not a gentleman on the administration side of the House who would not have rung it in the ears of his constituents as the authorized and formal avowal by the Republican candidate of all his enemies impute to his party. But, being a declaration of peace instead of one of war, shall we impeach its faith that our fears may not subside? or ought we not rather to read this text-authoritatively spoken in the presence of the gentlemen whose candidate he was, and who sanctioned it by their continued support for nearly two months afterward-by the light of that magnificent oration of his distinguished colleague [Mr. Corwin], which won the heart of every hearer by its genial and comprehensive spirit, and inaugurated in this hall, after the silence of years, the example of great parliamentary eloquence!

These declarations are reiterated assurances that there is no in

tention of invading the rights or quiet of any slaveholding state that there is no design or desire to tamper with or trouble slavery where it exists; that they are willing to let the subject alone, if others are willing to let things stand as they are.

Are declarations like these to be encountered and outweighed by the irresponsible clamors of scattered newspapers, by trumpery resolutions at excited town meetings, or by the ambiguous, contradictory, and shifting platforms hastily contrived for an emergency, and then forgotten? It was one of Mr. Calhoun's profound and sagacious remarks, that there was a strong tendency to confound the machinery of parties with formal bodies known to the law, and to treat the latter like the former. The debates of this session have been one perpetual illustration of its truth. They have repeated here the discussions of the hustings, dealt here with the contrivances of party warfare, and invoked such proofs to repel and annul the formal representations of the constitutional representatives of the people touching their purposes.

I invoke gentlemen to accept the declaration of the legal representatives touching the purposes of the people who sent him here to represent them in that very thing. Men may clamor, partisans may propose, papers may print a thousand things, and no one care to explain or contradict them; for no one is responsible for them. Silence is no consent; it is mere indifference or contempt. It is the conduct of the representative to which the people look when they would know if they were truly represented, and it is to that representative we should look when we wish to know the spirit and policy his constituents contemplate.

There will always be more or less of that vague dissertation on impractical theories, such as the possibility of property in man, or whether slavery be hateful to God, and the like, and those views will always have, as they have heretofore had, their eight or ten representatives on this floor; but surely we can afford to leave such dissertations unanswered, and without an answer they will soon die out. Politically, they are of no decisive importance, and involve no such danger as to keep gentlemen always on the alert with a response. But the records display the purposes of parties in the government; and if we there investigate the signs of the times, we will find, I think, that from 1855 to this time, there has been no single bill proposed contemplating a change in the condition of affairs touching slavery as it existed before the

repeal of the Missouri line. I had meant to develop that as a word of peace, but I have not time. The first controversy of the Thirty-fourth Congress related to the seat of the delegate from Kansas. The first bill was to repeal the laws of Kansas passed by the Legislature whose legality was contested. The next was Mr. Dunn's statesmanlike bill to reorganize the Territory of Kansas. The third was to admit Kansas under the Topeka Constitution. The fourth was to abolish the existing laws, and to reorganize the Territory of Kansas, without one word of slavery on one side or the other; and you know very well, gentlemen, that at the last Congress no proposition was entertained, excepting the question, which you argued and which we argued, whether we had a right to remit to the people the Lecompton Constitution, to be decided upon by the people who were to be bound by it. Up to this time, while there has been excitement at the North and at the South-while gentlemen have made offensive speeches here and elsewhere, there has been no measure of practical legislation proposed in this House that has not been defensive in its character; not one that has looked beyond retaining the Territories free which were already free.

We have, then, peace before us, if we will only accept it. The free states ask no new law. Their representatives tell us there will be no sectional questions mooted by them unless forced on them by others; and if we close with such declarations in the spirit of the declaration of the honorable gentleman from Ohio, and of the patriotic speech of his distinguished colleague, we may banish from our minds those "gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire,” amid whose hideous forms we have so long pursued our weary way.

K

SPEECH BEFORE THE ELECTORS OF THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF MARYLAND.

CONGRESS rose on the 25th of June, 1860, and all parties prepared for the great struggle in the approaching election for President of the United States. The excitement was greater than ever before throughout the country. The threats made in 1856, by the Southern States-rights Democracy, that the election of a "Black Republican" and sectional "Abolitionist” should be the signal for the secession of the South and the disruption of the Federal Union, were renewed with still more frequency and violence. The united and indivisible Democracy, after wrangling confusion and ineffectual efforts to unite upon a nomination at Charleston in May, had hopelessly split, and separated into the factions headed respectively by Mr. Douglas and Mr. Breckinridge. Each of these fragments claimed to be the whole; and each, as the exclusive and infallible authority, denounced and excommunicated the other half.

The Convention of the National Union and American party met at Baltimore, and efforts were made to procure the nomination of Judge Bates, of Missouri, with a view to his acceptance also by the Republicans. But the candidates named were John Bell, of Tennessee, with Edward Everett for the vice-presidency. It was afterward known that this position was assigned to Mr. Everett against his wishes, and he was with difficulty restrained from publicly disavowing it.

At Chicago the Republican Convention came together in the highest spirits. It seemed now, after the Kansas and Nebraska iniquities, and the openly-avowed intention of the Southern and Democratic parties to carry the blessings of slavery into all the Territories of the United States, as if the defeat of the party in 1856 had only rallied the resolution and moral sense of the North and West to the determination that the limit of endurance had been reached. It was confidently expected that the nomination there would naturally fall upon Ex-governor William H. Seward, the senator from New York, who had formed, organized, and led the great party of national defense in the North and West against the aggressions of the pro-slavery Democracy. His friends thought him entitled to this nomination by great ability, by long experience in the public service, by the eminent positions he had held, and by the fact that he was its acknowledged chief, and the leader of its success.

But, through causes not necessary to be related here, the choice fell upon Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, a man then comparatively unknown outside of his own state, but who was widely popular there, and who had gained great reputation at home by his contests with Mr. Douglas. To him was added Mr. Hamlin, of Maine, as candidate for the vice-prèsidency.

And now the contest began. In Maryland all four parties had some supporters; but it was soon evident that the question in this state would be between Mr. Breckinridge, as the representative of the extreme Southern and States-rights party, and Mr. Bell, who was a Southern Whig, opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Bills, and of that party also which, although in fact opposed to the extension of slavery, wished to be "neutral," and was forced to be silent on that question.

Mr. Davis took an active part in the campaign, and spoke before the electors of the Fourth Congressional District of Maryland as follows:

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE,-I regret that absence on public duty has prevented my being with you to celebrate the first note of triumph over the dissolution of the Democratic party.

When the resolution of the American members of the Legisla ture of Maryland, which has just been read to you, was passed, there was a Democratic party; one which was an "Old Bruiser" (laughter), as Mr. Thompson described Great Britain, roaming about the world, thrashing whomsoever it pleased, and shaking its fist in the face of all creation, domineering over every body, impudent, intolerant, and tyrannical. Now, the Democratic party is disputed between the warring elements, headed by Mr. Douglas and by Mr. Breckinridge. Who will have the honor of burying the body is not for us to determine. That will be left to whichever of these two fragments shall turn out to be the stronger at the end of this contest, and in that way to arrogate to itself to be the sole, united, undivided, universal, national, omnipotent Democratic party. (Laughter.) Our Democratic brethren last year, at Frederick, passed a resolution saying that upon the integrity of the Democratic party depended the integrity of the Union. The party is gone-where is the Union? (Laughter.) That where went its fragments must likewise go the fragments of the Union; and in accordance with the unfulfilled but anxiously-desired prophecy, one large portion of that party is now engaged perpetually in prophesying that if they happen to be defeated, that result will still follow. Gentlemen, it is matter of profound