So.

If gentlemen will do me the honor to follow my thought for a moment more I trust I will make this denial good.

That is

Our theory of law is free consent. the granite foundation of our whole superstructure. Nothing in this republic can be law without consent-the free consent of the House; the free consent of the Senate; the free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse it, the free consent of two thirds of these bodies. Will any man deny that? Will any man challenge a line of the statement that free consent is the foundation rock of all our institutions? And yet the programme announced two weeks ago was that if the Senate refused to consent to the demand of the House the government should stop. And the proposition was then, and the programme is now, that, although there is not a Senate to be coerced, there is still a third independent branch in the legislative power of the government whose consent is to be coerced at the peril of the destruction of this government; that is, if the President, in the discharge of his duty, shall exercise his plain constitutional right to refuse his consent to this proposed legislation, the Congress will so use its voluntary powers as to

destroy the government.

This is the proposi

tion which we confront; and we denounce it as revolution.

It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what the issue is. If it were the simplest and most inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if you demand, as a matter of coercion, that it shall be adopted against the free consent prescribed in the Constitution, every fair-minded man in America is bound to resist you as much as though his own life depended upon his resistance.

Let it be understood that I am not arguing the merits of any one of the three amendments. I am discussing the proposed method of legislation; and I declare that it is against the Constitution of our country. It is revolutionary to the core, and it is destructive of the fundamental element of American liberty, the free consent of all the powers that unite to make laws.

In opening this debate I challenge all comers to show a single instance in our history where this consent has been coerced. This is the great, the paramount issue, which dwarfs all others into insignificance.

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But I am compelled by the necessities of the

case to refer to a chapter of our recent history. The last act of Democratic domination in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic party said to the Republicans: "If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United States we will shoot your government to death"; and the people of this country, refusing to be coerced by threats of violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.

Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal combat. We called it rebellion; but we recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all the risks, and fight it out in the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the government was saved. Year by year since the war ended those who resisted you have come to believe that you have fully renounced your purpose to destroy and are willing to maintain the government. In that belief you have been permitted to return to power in the two Houses.

To-day, after eighteen years of defeat, the

book of your domination is again opened, and your first act awakens every unhappy memory and threatens to destroy the confidence which your professions of patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of history that recorded your last act of power in 1861, and you have now signalized your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page; not this time by an heroic act that declares war on the battlefield, but you say if all the legislative powers of the government do not consent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book you will not shoot our government to death as you tried to do in the first chapter, but you declare that if we do not consent against our will, if you cannot coerce an independent branch of this government, against its will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some laws put there by the will of the people, you will starve the government to death.

Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know that the American people will see any great difference. The end, if successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you have it in your power to kill this government; you have it in your power, by withholding these two bills, to smite

the nerve-centres of our Constitution with the paralysis of death, and you have declared your purpose to do this, if you cannot break down that fundamental element of free consent which up to this hour has always ruled in the legislation of this government.

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Gentlemen, we have calmly surveyed this new field of conflict; we have tried to count the cost of the struggle, as we did that of 1861 before we took up your gage of battle. Though no human foresight could forecast the awful loss of blood and treasure, yet in the name of liberty and union we accepted the issue and fought it out to the end. We made the appeal to our august sovereign, to the omnipotent public opinion of America, to determine whether the Union should perish at your hands. You know the result. And now lawfully, in the exercise of our right as Representatives, we take up the gage you have this day thrown down, and appeal again to our common sovereign to determine whether you shall be permitted to destroy the principle of free consent in legislation under the threat of starving the government to death.

We are ready to pass these bills for the support of the Government at any hour when you