sir, in a certain emergency; not sworn to destroy, if necessary to save the life of the country, but unconditionally to support at all times and in all places, as if that life were bound up with it forever. You have taken upon your soul the oath to sustain that Constitution. Now you say on certain conditions you would break your oath! What is moral treason? What is moral perjury? I do not charge these upon the gentleman; but I beg him to reconsider and call back his words.

Mr. JULIAN. Will the gentleman yield to me right here?

Mr. Cox. I will, if the gentleman thinks I have done him injustice. Mr. JULIAN. I have taken that oath, and I have asserted publicly that there is no necessity in the world for violating it. But the gentleman has not answered the interrogatory which I propounded to him. I wish him to state explicitly whether, if the life of the nation could only be saved by a violation of the Constitution, he would be willing to save it in that way. [Laughter on the Republican side of the House.]

Mr. Cox. I will answer the question. I am used to laughter from that side of the House. It does not distract me, for laughter is not logic. What is the life of the nation, sir, of which we hear so much? I know no other life of the nation except that incarnate in the written Constitution, which protects property, person, home, conscience, liberty, and life. Take away these, and there is no nation. Society is stagnant and dead. The gentleman regards liberty as the life of the nation, a sort of ill-defined liberty for black and white, I suppose. I regard the Constitution as the embodiment of constitutional freedom in this country, the very body, life, and soul of the Union. That is the Constitution of the United States. When you strike that down you strike down the life of the nation. Therefore we, on this side, have determined, in order to save the life of the Government, to save the Constitution from destruction.

Mr. JULIAN. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him another question?

Mr. Cox. If the gentleman is not fully answered, I will say this,

THAT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES CONCEIVABLE BY THE HUMAN MIND WOULD

I EVER VIOLATE THAT CONSTITUTION FOR ANY PURPOSE. [Cries of "That's it!" "That's it!" from the Democratic side of the House.] As Judge Thomas has said, "I would cling to it as the bond of unity in the past, as the only practical bond of union in the future; the only land lifted above the waters, on which the ark of the Union can be moored. From that ark alone will go out the dove, blessed of the Spirit, which shall return bringing in its mouth the olive-branch of peace.' To compass its destruction as a probable or possible necessity, is the very gospel of anarchy, the philosophy of dissolution.

If there be any man in this chamber who holds or utters any other sentiment in reference to the Constitution and his oath than this which I have expressed, I say to him, that language has no term of reproach, and the mind no idea of detestation, adequate to express the moral leprosy and treason couched in his language and clinging to his soul. I will not designate such utterances by any harsher language in a parliamentary body.

When interrupted by the member from Indiana, I was about to go a little further in answer to what the Speaker said in reference to the De

mocracy of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I took a part in the campaign of last year, as I said, not because I approved of the peculiar peace notions of my former colleague. It was well known in Ohio, that my votes here did not always coincide with his, and that my sentiments did not agree with his altogether; but when by an arbitrary arrest, without warrant, without a fair trial, in defiance of the Constitution, in defiance of a law passed by ourselves, in defiance of English and American traditions, petitions, and bills of right, he was arrested and exiled, the Democracy of Ohio raised an issue in favor of fair trial, free speech, the immunities of personal freedom, and an honest and lawful administration of public affairs. That was our only issue. I took ground everywhere in favor of the liberty of the citizen and the integrity of the Constitution. Disagreeing always with the peculiar tenets held by him in relation to coercion, I held that he had the same right to speak for peace as the soldier to fight for it. But I will say this for him, that nowhere, here or at home, did he ever utter a sentiment or do an act looking to the recognition of the southern confederacy. He said in his place in this House, again and again, and quoted Mr. Calhoun's opinions on the Mexican war in his justification, that he would not oppose the voting of men and money to carry on this war, the responsibility for which he did not covet nor bear. But, sir, he never would consent to a peace based upon recognition. He so said in the North, and he said the same in his exile in the South.

We were defeated in Ohio on account of the issue made on the peace sentiment. I bowed to that decision. But, sir, while there are some in our party opposed to coercion and in favor of a peace indiscriminately, without regard to consequences, the great body of the Democratic people in our State and in the North have never gone beyond one conclusion; and that is, they are forever opposed to curtailing the limits of our empire by the recognition of a new nation carved out of our territory and made up of our States and people. Come war, come peace, come any thing, we would bring about a restoration of the old Government, with the old order. Our determination is to superadd to force the policy of conciliation; not to withdraw our forces from the field and yield to the South independence, but to superadd one other element of union-kindness and Christianity. If gentlemen cannot understand how two such ideas are compatible in the same mind with each other and with patriotism, I cannot teach them. While we have been ever ready to sustain our gallant soldiers in the field by our money and our men, we have been also ready at every hour of our triumph and at every opportunity for compromise, to extend an honorable amnesty to the erring; not the jugglery of the executive amnesty, based upon a proclamation of abolition which is a lie, but an amnesty which shall bring back the great body of the people South, if it be yet possible, to their allegiance. We desire to make our victories consequential by the rehabilitation of the States as they were, and to make out of them, and not out of illegitimate States, the old Union, one and indivisible !

This is the policy of the northern Democracy. We accept as our platform the integrity of the Union. Upon that platform we will never, in any emergency of this Republic, yield up this country and its Constitution to secession, and to its baleful counterpart, abolition. "Amid all the

darkness, the thick darkness around us, we will cling to the single, simple sublime issue the Constitution, and the Union of which it is the bond; the old Union. God bless the old Union, and the wrath of the Lamb of God shrivel to their very sockets the arms lifted to destroy it; not in vengeance, but in mercy to them and to all mankind.”

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW-ITS REPEAL-RIGHT OF ASYLUM.

On the 13th of June, 1864, this bill furnished the last opportunity of arraigning the Republicans for their violations of law; but as the discussion has lost its interest, that portion of the speech is omitted. It was mostly an argument ad hominem against the members from Wisconsin and Ohio, who sustained the infraction of the fugitive slave law. Something of a colloquy occurred between Messrs. BALDWIN, of Massachusetts, and BLAINE, of Maine, and the Speaker, as to the execution of the law in time of war and on black soldiers. The occasion was seized by Mr. Cox to vindicate the right of asylum, outraged in the case of Arguelles.

ARGUELLES' CASE.

Mr. Cox said: I cannot understand why these gentlemen would destroy the only method of carrying out this extradition system of our Constitution; and yet the other day, when a Spanish subject was arrested by our authorities, and taken from our shores which he sought as an asylum, these gentlemen sustained such extraordinary action. Against the Constitution, without law, without treaty, without evidence, without jury trial, without warrant, without information, by executive power, usurping the treaty power, usurping the law-making power, usurping the power of the judiciary, this Administration delivered to Spain a white refugee; and this Congress, with cringing obsequiousness, bowed before executive dictation, and by their legislative action said, "All right, Mr. President, you can seize a white man and take him from the country in defiance of the great right of asylum; but when a black man, escaping from one State to another, and whom we are commanded by the Constitution to deliver up, and under the sanction of our oath to make laws for such delivery, we break down the constitutional clause and the laws sanctioned by the judiciary in order to create in the North an asylum for the blacks of the South." When a white man from another nation is torn away, and the practice and usage of all free and civilized nations is outraged, gentlemen on that side stifle proper resolutions of condemnation.

Mr. MORRIS, of New York. The gentleman will allow me to ask him a question for information. In the case referred to by the gentleman from Ohio, was the man charged with crime or was he not?

Mr. Cox. I say to my friend from New York that that white man was charged with a crime in newspapers, by clamor, but not legally. There was no charge, no warrant, no information, and no trial. I defy gentlemen to give me a resolution of inquiry, to ascertain whether the Executive or the Secretary of State had any thing in writing but the request

of the Spanish minister upon which to base the arrest and extradition of this Spaniard, seeking an asylum in this country. Upon the request of Señor Tassara, the Spanish minister, Mr. Seward issued his rescript, and the man was taken from the privacy of his own room, without the knowledge of his wife, who was in the next chamber. He was hurried on board a steamer, was hurried off to Havana, and is there held as a criminal to be tried. And yet gentlemen upon the other side dare not condemn that. Why? Because it was alleged that he was engaged in some way in the slave trade. Well, some one with less sense than sensibility may cry out, "Oh! you are the defender of the slave trade and slave traders." There is only one answer to this: the monosyllabic answer, "Pshaw." I defend no crime when I defend the right of asylum; nor do I defend slavery, when I oppose the repeal of a constitutional law for the rendition of slaves.

It has been said that this Spanish subject, Colonel Arguelles, was engaged in the slave trade, and hence an enemy of the human race. The truth is that he was not engaged in that trade. Slaves had been landed in the district of Colon, in Cuba, under his jurisdiction, and those slaves, as it was alleged, he had sold after they were landed and confiscated, and having made money out of the transaction in violation of his duty he had fled to this country. There was no proof of all this. It was the only allegation, however, and it may be true. Suppose it were. The charge

is simply that of a breach of the municipal law of Spain. He is not, then, in the legal sense, as Mr. Seward asserted, an enemy of the human race. He was not a pirate in any legal or moral sense, but a criminal under the laws of Spain. He could only be delivered to Spain under a treaty or a statute, and neither existed between this country and Spain. Yet gentlemen who are becoming so careful about the personal liberty of black men as to refuse to render them up in pursuance of the Constitution, sustain the extradition of a white man without evidence, law, treaty, or constitutional authority. If there were a treaty between Spain and the United States similar to this authority in our Constitution with regard to the rendition of black fugitives, no indignation would ever have been hurled by a hospitable people, proud of their system of asylum under our once free Government, against its present perfidious administrators. Upon the same principle, or want of principle, by which the Executive gave up this Spaniard, they would have surrendered Thomas Francis Meagher, a criminal convicted by the judicial tyranny of England, Professor Agassiz, the savant, whom the world delights to honor, and every other man of great or little note who comes here from abroad.

We have had many humiliations since the present Administration came into power. We have bowed humbly before the throne of the French usurper, at the beck of an arrogant foreign minister, and allowed an Austrian prince and an imperial dupe to bear a crown from Europe to our continent, and sway a sceptre over a democratic republic with which we were in friendly alliance. We have had domestic humiliations by the forcible abduction, imprisonment, and exile of our citizens without law or trial. We have had our very thoughts pinioned, our presses manacled, and our writs of right and liberty annulled. For all these we place our hands upon our mouths in shame; but for this last humiliation, by which

America is no longer the home of the oppressed or the refuge of the foreigner, by which we are made the hissing and byword of the nations, we cast our mouths in the dust in abjectest degradation. We are put to cruel shame before all civilized nations, nay, before even half-civilized nations.

Turkey once protected the Hungarian patriot, Kossuth; Switzerland protects all political refugees in the midst of Europe, and stands there in her Republican simplicity and faith as firm as her everlasting mountains against the oppressions around her. We protected the half-made citizen Koszta in an Asiatic harbor, and rescued him from an Austrian ship; but this was when we had a Democrat to represent us in our foreign affairs like William L. Marcy. But while this national Congress stops in the midst of a great civil war to sow new dissensions in our midst by unwise legislation like this for black fugitives, it has shown its servile timidity before the usurpations of our Executive, and has allowed the lettre de cachet of the French monarch to be reissued under the great seal of the United States, without a murmur of dissent or denunciation. We are disgraced before the world by the violation of the great feature of our system of polity. What new humiliation is in store for us?

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that I am not travelling out of the range of proper discussion by referring to this matter of the extradition of a foreigner without treaty or law. I have considered it fully. I hope before Congress adjourns that the Committee on the Judiciary will report a bill for the purpose of punishing such officers as dare lay their hands upon refugees who are here from countries with which we have no treaty, and in cases where there is no law for their delivery. Such refugees have the right to shoot down the officers who thus arrest them, and be entirely innocent of crime. Refugees under such circumstances would have the right to sue Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, or the marshal of New York, for false imprisonment, because of the absence of all law and all treaty in relation to that subject.

What inference do I draw from this? That in my opinion, as to all matters of rendition, whether of fugitives from service or justice, or of political refugees, there is always some law required to carry out in good faith the treaty or agreement upon those subjects. Hence, as between these United States, we had placed here in this second section of the fourth article of the Constitution, that any person charged with treason, felony, or other crime, fleeing from one State to another, should be delivered up, and Congress passed a law to carry that out. For the purpose of delivering up persons accused of crime in one State and fleeing to another, papers are prepared, a prima facie case is made out, and a quasi trial is had. These are indispensable to executive action among our States. So in regard to fugitives from labor, the same preliminaries are required. Proof, a hearing before the commissioner, and warrants for the delivery of the fugitive to the claimant-these prerequisites are a part of a system as to all renditions.

It is laid down in every authority on international law, and by statesmen who have had instances before them in this country in the various cases growing out of the treaties with Great Britain, France, and other countries, that there can be no rendition of any one from one State to