gentlemen may choose to form and express; but the question as to the power and extent of the authority which these opinions carry with them, has become one of the vital issues of the day. If this wide-reaching jurisdiction over the whole sweep of public affairs shall be acknowledged by the people, as it seems to have been by some statesmen, then the people will have found a master; for the power to change the fundamental law of a nation at will, is equally supreme and despotic, whether placed in the hands of a single emperor at Paris, a council of ten in Venice, or a court of nine in Washington.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to no one in my respect for that court, when acting in its appropriate sphere. I recognize on that bench judges of great learning and worth. As a citizen, or a litigant, I am obliged to submit to their judgment in all cases to which I am a party, within their jurisdiction. As a lawyer pleading at their bar, I bow to the authority of their adjudged cases; but as a legislator, when the construction of that great charter from which we both alike derive all our power, and which we are equally bound to maintain, is involved, as a member of a coördinate and at least an equal branch of the common Government, their opinions with me, like those of all others, must stand or fall by their rendered reasons. Sir, I have an abiding faith that the people will never submit, nor allow their representatives to submit, to any such doctrine of final and infallible authority; that they will never suffer this Constitution of theirs to be overlaid and smothered with legal precedents; will never permit its fair page to be scribbled over with the glosses of old lawyers, like a palimpsest, in which some grand and simple old classic is obliterated by the black-letter substitutes of a chapter of chattering monks.

I conclude, at all events, the principle of res adjudicata does not govern here. We at least can so far sink the technics of the lawyer as to banish from this house the conventional notion that the last adjudication is therefore the best. Sir, if we are indeed to accept the opinions of the Supreme Court as absolute authority to control our votes here, I for one should prefer to choose the master by whose words I am to swear. I would go back to other days-to the Thompsons, the Washingtons, the Storys, and above all, to the great Chief Justice. Sir, when I compare the constitutional judgments of that illustrious jurist, who for so many years shed upon that tribunal the illuminations of his great mind, with the decisions of some more recent judges, in a late most celebrated case, I am almost tempted to exclaim

with Cicero, when he compared the sophists and sciolists of his day with his own great master in philosophy, Malo errare, mehercle, cum Platone quam cum istis vera sentire.

Hon. James Humphrey, 1861.

RECONSTRUCTION IMPOSSIBLE.

MR. SPEAKER, the fashionable phrase of the day now is reconstruction. Gentlemen speak with a coolness, which ought in these times to be refreshing, of violently breaking up this great Government for the purpose of reconstructing a better out of its shattered fragments. Sir, in my judgment there can be no more fatal delusion than this. Once make the separation complete, and you make it final. If the spirit of patriotism is so far extinct, if the ancient fraternal feeling has so utterly died out, that we are ready to overturn this structure, where and when shall we look for such a revival of both as shall suffice for its rebuilding? Sir, if this Union were but an alliance, a league, a partnership, or whatever other epithet of dishonor you choose to apply to express the lowest form of contract, such a reconstruction would be impossible; for it could not take place without war, immediate or proximate. When once kindred states have been torn asunder, and their borders have become battle-fields, and their dissevered and bleeding edges have been cauterized by the fires of war, what skillful surgery, what sweet medicaments of nature, what healing influences of time, can ever reunite them?

But, sir, political institutions are not lifeless masses, to be shaped, and matched, and glued together at will by ingenious artisans. Great States are not dead, geometrical forms, to be arranged and rearranged into a hundred curious shapes, like a Chinese puzzle. They are vital organizations, which determine their forms, not by external forces, but by the principle of life within them. This national Government, as I think I have shown, is the growth of more than two centuries. It strikes its root far back into the earliest colonial settlements; and when you can reconstruct the oak which you have hewn limb from limb, you may reunite and revivify the torn and dismembered body of the Republic.

But, sir, this is not all. This ideal reconstruction is rendered forever impossible by the very act of dismemberment. Once establish the right of secession, and you not only destroy this Union, but you destroy the living principle itself,

without which no Union can exist. Be assured that the States which remain loyal to this Constitution will never become parties to a trumpery compact, which can be dissolved in secret session, by a packed convention of a single State. Whatever States shall tear themselves away by revolutionary violence must return, if they return at all, with the recantation of this heresy on their lips, and submissive to the true theory of the Constitution.-Hon. James Humphrey, 1861.

THE CORNER STONE.

THE new Constitution has put at rest, forever, all agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this,, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a government built upon it; when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery—subordination to the superior race-is his natural and normal condition.

This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even among us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. It is upon this principle our social fabric is firmly planted, and I can not permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of its full recognition throughout the civilized and enlightened world.

As I have stated, the truth may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo; it was so with Adam Smith, and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is said that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledg ment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the enslavement of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with proper materiais-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best not only for the superior, but for the inferior race that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another in glory."

The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to His laws and decrees, in the formation of govern

ments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders, "is become the chief stone of the corner" in our new edifice.

Hon. A. H. Stephens, March, 1861.

UNNECESSARY EXCITEMENT CAUSED BY IRRESPONSIBLE MEN.

ONE objection I take to the passage of the resolutions, that it will much increase the excitement and panic already existing through the State, and so existing more by apprehension and the ceaseless efforts of a sensation press, than for any just and sufficient cause. It will alarm unnecessarily the innocent women and the plain yeomanry of the State, who have little time to investigate matters of public concern, and will lead to general disquiet. The adoption of the resolutions will be regarded as a sort of license to the wicked elements among us. Besides the mass of conscientious and honorable secessionists, there is in this State, as in all others, a class who desire revolution because they may be benefitted and cannot be injured by change that class so well described by the historian Sallust as studiosi novarum rerum—desirous of change—because in the general upheaving of society, they might come to the surface, and be bettered in their condition. This class long for collision and blood, because they know well that the first clash between the State and Federal muskets-the first drop of blood that collision spills-will enkindle a flame that will light them on to the accomplishment of their foul, hellish purposes of blood and carnage. This class would, in a mere spirit of adventure, fire the very temples of liberty, and dash into fragments that proudest and noblest monument of human wisdom-the Union of these States-the handiwork of Washington, and Franklin, and Madison, and Gerry, and Morris, and comrade conscript fathers-under which we have been the proudest, freest, happiest, greatest nation on the face of the earth. This class does exist in Virginia. It exists all over the civilized earth, and it is no detraction from Virginia to say that it exists within her domain; she would be an exception to all human society, if she did not hold in her bosom such a class. Now all this class will be stimulated by the passage of these revolutionary, and force-inviting, and lawless resolutions, to deeds of lawlessness, violence and blood. Let this legislature beware how it holds out the seductive bait. It may encamp us on a mine which a spark