thrown upon that committee since the commencement of the war. But I prefer to append it to my remarks. Whereas before the war we scarcely expended more than $70,000,000 a year, now, during the five sessions of the last two Congresses, there has been an average appropriation of at least $800,000,000 per session. The statement which I hold in my hand shows that during the first and extra session of the Thirty-seventh Congress there came appropriation bills from the Committee of Ways and Means amounting to $226,691,457.99. I say nothing now of the loan and other fiscal bills emanating from that committee. During the second session of that Congress bills were reported to the amount of $883,029,987.14; and during the last session of that Congress $972,827,829.90. During the first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress appropriation bills were reported amounting to $788,124,021.94, and during the present session I suppose it would be a fair estimate to take the appropriations of the last session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, say $900,000,000!

These are appropriation bills alone. They are stupendous, and but poorly symbolize the immense labors which the internal revenue, tariff, and loan bills imposed on the committee. Neither do they represent the actual appropriations; for the House has frequently increased these bills enormously. The aggregate of these appropriation bills reaches the astounding amount of $3,770,673,296.97, or nearly four thousand million dollars! For the army alone the appropriation bills during the past five sessions are over three thousand millions! And this business of appropriations is perhaps not one half of the labor of the committee. There are various and important matters upon which they act, but upon which they never report. Their duties comprehend all the varied interests of the United States; every element and branch of industry, and every dollar or dime of value. They are connected with taxation, tariffs, banking, loan bills, and ramify to every fibre of the body-politic. All the springs of wealth and labor are more or less influenced by the action of this committee. Their responsibility is immense, and their control almost imperial over the necessities, comforts, homes, hopes, and destinies of the people. All the values of the United States, which in the census of 1860 (page 194) amount to nearly seventeen thousand million dollars, or, to be exact, $16,159,616,068, are affected by the action of that committee, even before their action is approved by the House. Those values fluctuate whenever the head of the Ways and Means rises in his place and proposes a measure. The price of every article we use trembles when he proposes a gold bill, or a loan bill, or any bill to tax directly or indirectly. In ten years these values increased at the rate of more than one hundred and twenty-six per cent., adding in one decade $8,925,481,011 to our real and personal property. Since this war began these values have been. drawn upon to give credit and cash to the Government, and so drawn upon that one-half of the increase and one-fourth of all of these values are already practically under mortgage. Can one committee properly pass upon the immense interests thus bound up, and reaching down to other generations? Not only every rood of land has now to sustain its living occupant, but it has to sustain soldiers in the field and sailors on the sea, who are not producing, but destroying, what is wrought from the soil. Nay, more, it has to pay its tribute to the creditor of the nation, not only

in the present, but to the inheritor of our national bonds. The laborer who works now his ten hours per diem, must work four hours more for the creditor of the nation. Thus is our nation being overburdened by the legislation of to-day; burdened for the present and for the future. Is it not best to give every facility for the crystallization of the wisest financial policy? And does not this measure assume greater importance because of its far-reaching effects upon our finances and our future? Without discussing the wisdom of our present system of finance, is it not important, in this day when these debts are growing, to have the system as nearly safe and just as possible? Have we not already, like other nations, instead of providing for the principal, provided only for the interest of these great debts? What follows? That money borrowed, being obtained without sweat or sacrifice, is spent lightly, without economy or care. Dr. Arnold well says, that "a revenue raised at the expense of posterity is sure to be squandered wastefully. Waste begets want, and the sums raised by loans will commonly be large." If that be true, is it not a cogent reason for the separation of the old committee which borrows from the committee which pays? One will be a veto on the other; and something of economy may be gained, and something of extravagance restrained.

Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to discuss this change of our rules in its details. But is there not a necessity for some change? Is it not wise to divide such labors as have been described? Who wishes to overwork any set of gentlemen in this or any future Congress? There are gentlemen who will be in the next Congress when this change shall take effect, who will be glad to share with the old committee the solution of these financial problems. These problems are soon to agitate the country above all other questions. Peace and war depend upon them. They rise higher than peace or war. They rise higher than the freedom and slavery of the blacks. Perpetual and enormous debt is slavery for body and mind. Hence the interests connected with these economical questions are of all questions those most momentous for the future. Parties, statesmanship, union, stability, all depend upon the manner in which these questions are dealt with. Shall the tariff be one of bounty or of revenue only? Shall a Chinese policy ward off all foreign interchange from our shores? Or shall protection, so long abandoned by the scientific and practical men of our generation, be again introduced into our economy? Shall taxes be levied equally on the rich and poor? Shall the funded debt of this nation be paid to the few in gold by the sweat of the many? Shall labor be held in thrall and branded as the serf of capital? Shall one interest or section be pampered at the expense and poverty of another? Shall we forever bury and keep buried the symmetric system of a gold and silver currency, as the standard of the Constitution and of nature, under the lush growth of greenbacks and paper promises? When this war shall end, and the present inflation has collapsed; when the "stocks on hand" of merchant and capitalist shall have suffered in the wreck of credit and crash of paper money; when "settling day" shall come and the meretricious splendors of fictitious wealth shall fade; when the diamonds of to-day shall become the paste of to-morrow; when speculation shall no longer flaunt its upstart pretension in the face of merit and modesty; when a

common ruin shall ingulf both poor and rich; when the gilded vessel gliding so smoothly over this smooth summer sea of delusive prosperity shall meet the "whirlwind's sweepy sway;" then who will direct the whirlwind and who temper the storm? Why not now, in the present, look these dangers in the face, and by prescience avert them? As an adjunct in this work, let these finance committees have time and opportunity to do their work, and then it may be well done. This can only be done by a division of their labor as proposed by this amendment. Whichever party deals by these questions most nearly in the interests of labor-the procreant source of all wealth and taxes-that party will have and keep the ascendency in the political control of the Government.

5

II.

SEDITION IN THE NORTH.

IMPARTIAL history will not fail to record the efforts and doctrines of those who held to the supremacy of a higher law than the Constitution. Although a resuscitation of such discussions may seem inappropriate, they have their lessons. I insert a series of speeches, mostly in the ad hominem vein, upon the lawlessness engendered at the North. Such conduct provoked its like. Some of those speeches have the dramatic form of quick and earnest colloquy. The sentiment which originally antagonized with the fugitive slave law, never flagged till its repeal in 1864. These speeches show the progress of the Republican party from the time it gave a faint and echoless voice against the Federal statutes as to slavery, until its antagonism became defiant and successful.

The first running debate, in which these tendencies of the Republican leaders were developed, was on the occasion of an attack by Mr. GIDDINGS, on the 15th of January, 1859, on the Democratic party for its complicity with the slave trade. In this debate he called out his younger colleague, whom he had accused of "skulking behind the bush." I pressed him on the question of negro suffrage in return. He was not ready to answer then, as he expected to be a candidate for Governor. Avoiding and still avoiding the questions propounded as to allowing negroes to vote, the colloquy ended thus:

Mr. Cox. Answer the question, sir. The gentleman talked about my hiding under the bush. Let him come out, if he dare, from his covert. [Laughter.]

Mr. GIDDINGS. I say that I do not interfere in this question as to superiority between the Democrats and the negroes.

Mr. Cox. He talk of his Democratic colleague skulking under the bush! He dare not answer my question. I will not press the gentleman further. My respect for him will not allow me to put him to the torture further. He never could get the nomination for the governorship if he had answered my question categorically; and I am anxious he should be nominated. [Laughter.]

Mr. GIDDINGS. So far as the Democratic party is concerned, I repeat that I judge the Africans by their intelligence and virtue. I do not enter into the quarrel between them with the Republicans. I do not mean to put them on an equality with the Republicans.

Mr. Cox. The gentleman does not answer my question. I therefore will not press him further. All that I wished was to put the Democratic party right in regard to this matter of slavery; and they are right on it, being neither an anti-slavery nor a pro-slavery party. The gentleman may go on and get the nomination for the governorship, and make his alliance, if he can, in northern and southern Ohio, and we will meet him at Philippi.

It is enough to say that Mr. GIDDINGS never became a candidate for Governor. He was lectured by the Anti-Slavery Standard for not being more courageous in this debate for the right of the negro to vote. But he ceased not until his decease to advocate his radical notions. He was not returned to the 36th Congress. Subsequently, on the 9th of February, 1861, Mr. Cox had another running debate with the successor of Mr. GIDDINGS, in which (far too harshly) he characterized the ruinous effect of Mr. GIDDINGS's political views. This debate is thus reported:

NORTHERN NULLIFIERS.

Mr. Cox. I was surprised that my colleague from the Ashtabula district, at the conclusion of his attack upon my colleague (Governor CORWIN), should have attacked me. Why he did so, I know not; unless it be from the fact that I asked him a question in explanation of his argument about incendiary publications to provoke insurrection. I asked him the question, whether or not he was in favor of suppressing all such publications as the Helper book and Theodore Parker's programme, published in the Tribune, for the robbery and murder of masters by their slaves to obtain their freedom? The gentleman did not answer the question. He evaded it; for he knew that he represented a constituency who are continually preaching and publishing that very sedition of which my colleague [Mr. CORWIN] Complained, and of which he [Mr. HUTCHINS] is the defender, and of which John Brown was the exemplar. The gentleman knew, when he covered his attack upon Governor CORWIN by his attack upon me, that he represented some of the very men who had been engaged in raids upon their neighbors' lives and property. I cannot, sir, fail to remember that his sensibility about certain disclosures that have transpired in relation to the Republican executive of Ohio, in refusing to deliver to Virginia such miscreants, is no doubt caused by the fact that some of the renegades and rascals of John Brown's conspiracy had a protecting ægis in the conspiring treason of his own district. I state these facts openly, and in my place, because they are wrongs, and with a view to their remedy by proper measures. But, sir, I wanted to call attention especially to an ungenerous attack upon myself. I did not expect it from the gentleman. He said I was always very busy in the House furnishing facts—yes,