ness of the country can bear; but if, in addition to that, a further reduction is made of one hundred million dollars, as is proposed, three-quarters of the manufactories of the central and northern portions of the country will be suspended. Sir, it is not a question whether the laborers shall be able to earn a dollar and a half or a dollar a day, but it is a question of work and subsistence for eight thousand of my constituents residing in one of the cities of Massachusetts; therefore I should be false to my trust, if I hesitated to say that a limit should be fixed beyond which the Secretary of the Treasury shall not go in this condition of public affairs. We offer to fix it at $450,000,000 nonbearing-interest legal tenders, $300,000,000 nationalbank currency; and, if that reduction be made, specie will approximate to par with paper next December, upon the theory to which I have before referred. The authority to reduce the currency without limit is a vast authority to confide to any man. It gives the Secretary the power to make every man in the country between the Rio Grande and the St. John's, weep or laugh any day at pleasure. I, for one, can consent to no such proposition; and yet I feel bound to say that there is no man whose general financial policy I would more heartily support than that of the Secretary of the Treasury; and I should look upon it as a calamity, if his place should be occupied by any other man whom it is my fortune to know. But, notwithstanding this feeling, and although we are all aware that the power is not to be exercised, yet, by confiding it to him, we give the people reason to apprehend, that, at some time, the power may be exercised by him, or by his successor, whoever he may be; and that apprehension will be a constant weight upon the business interests of the country. I appeal to the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means to allow this bill to be recommitted to his committee without instructions, and take their judgment after this debate. If he will agree to allow the motion to recommit to be made," I think I may say that we will not object to the reconsideration; but, if the committee insist that there shall be no recommitment of the bill, then there is no course for us but to vote against the motion to reconsider the action of Friday last. 456 THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT FOR EQUALIZING REPRESENTATION. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, THE HE House having under consideration the joint resolution (H. R. No. 127) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, reported from the joint Committee on Reconstruction, Mr. SPEAKER,- The gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Eldridge] has made some remarks in derogation of the Committee on Reconstruction. I do not purpose to reply at length to those remarks. He has said that the action of the committee is a failure. We knew very well from the beginning, that, as far as he and his friends were concerned, the labors of the committee would be a failure. He puts one question, however, in behalf, I suppose, of himself and his Democratic friends, which I feel bound to answer. He says, "The committee have not told us when our troubles"-meaning, I suppose, the troubles of himself and his Democratic friends "will cease." Mr. ELDRIDGE. -Oh, no! the gentleman certainly misunderstood me. I meant the troubles which the Republicans themselves were making. Mr. BOUTWELL.-The troubles of the gentleman and his friends are very likely to increase. But, Mr. Speaker, the chief object which I have now in view- and I trust, that, in seeking to attain that object, I shall not go beyond the line of parliamentary debate into the domain of partisan controversy is to show how the proposition before us from that committee traverses the policy of the Democratic party with reference to the reconstruction of the government. I admit that the policy of the Democratic party is a simple policy. It is a policy easily comprehended. It is a policy in which for ten years, within my observation, they have been consistent. It is a policy which they laid down as early as 1856, in the plat form made at Cincinnati, wherein they declared substantially — for I cannot recite the precise language of the declaration, as it is many years since I read those resolutions that it was the right of a Territory to be admitted into this Union with such institutions as it chose to establish, and not even by implication admitting that the representatives of the existing government have any right to canvass those institutions, or to consider the right of the Territory to be recognized as a State. From that doctrine, which probably had its origin in the resolutions of 1798, the whole of their policy to this day has legitimately followed. First, we saw its results in the theories of Mr. Buchanan, announced in 1860, that, while the Constitution did not provide for or authorize the secession of a State from this Union, there was no power in the existing government to compel a State to remain in the Union against its own judgment. Following that doctrine, they come legitimately to the conclusion of to-day, in which they are supported, as I understand, by the President of the United States upon the one side, and, as I know, by the testimony of Alexander H. Stephens, late Vice-President of the socalled Confederacy, upon the other. That doctrine is, that these eleven States, each for itself, have an existing, immediate, and unquestionable right of representation in the government of this country, and that it is a continuous right, which has not been interrupted by any of the events of the war. This is a simple policy. It is a direct policy. It is a policy which can be comprehended. It is the policy of the Democratic party; and whether the President of the United States or the humblest citizen of the country accepts or avows it, he has no right whatever to call it his policy. It is the policy of the Democratic party. I wish to lay before the House a proposition, and I beg the attention of Democratic gentlemen to it. I have written out the proposition with some care, and I think that I state exactly, and I hope not unfavorably, the position of the Democratic party on this question. The proposition is this: 1. The Democratic party maintains that a State of the American Union cannot by its own acts separate itself from its associate States. 2. That the events of this war, including the individual, organized, and public acts of the people and governments of the eleven rebellious States, have not in any way changed the constitutional relations which, previous to the war, subsisted between |