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they want to approach that object by having a colored representative in the capitol at Washington. Is not that your object? I charge that it is. Do you not want to begin by giving national equality to the black republics? After having obtained the equality of black nations with white nations, do you not propose to carry the equality a little further, and so make individual, political, and social equality?

Mr. FESSENDEN. The gentleman can draw such inferences as he pleases; but he will state his own reasons, and not ours.

Mr. Cox. If I draw my own inferences, I might draw a great many about the gentleman from Maine. I recollect that the gentleman stated that he would rather that the Union should not be restored than that slavery should continue. I draw some remarkable inferences from such language. He is, therefore, consistent and logical in trying to get at black equality. If slavery is not abolished, he is a disunionist. He is for its abolition, and hence favors this plan of equality, to welcome the enfranchised when the scheme is fully ripe.

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. The other day, when we had a bill before the House for the emancipation of the slaves of rebels, I offered an amendment for their colonization, against which the gentleman voted.

Mr. Cox. Yes, I did.

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. That looks as if the gentleman wanted to keep the negroes here on an equality with us. [Laughter.]

Mr. Cox. The gentleman laughs, and others laugh around him. It is only the crackling of thorns under a pot. There is no inconsistency in my proposition. I voted against the proposition to colonize the negroes, not because I did not believe, if this emancipation took place, the emancipated slaves would not be better apart from the whites, and better out of the country; but because I am not prepared, in view of the great expense which such a proposition would incur, to add now to our present heavy taxation.

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. My amendment proposes that the negroes should be apprenticed, and that the receipts should go to pay the expenses of their removal.

Mr. Cox. I know that idea was ingrafted as an amendment to some other wild proposition; but it was one of those delusive, Utopian schemes for Federal supervision over a system of labor, which, I thought, did not come from the practical good sense which distinguishes the gentleman from Missouri, and the distinguished family from which he springs. [Laughter.] But why does the gentleman come forward to lecture me for not voting for his bill? Why does he not turn round and lecture some of his confrères upon the other side of the House? Let him secure a majority of his own friends first in favor of his proposition, and then he can appeal to us.

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. The gentleman will allow me to say that a majority upon this side of the House voted for it. Fifty-odd Republican members voted for it, which covers more than a majority of the Republicans who voted.

Mr. Cox. Why do you not lecture those of them who did not vote for it?

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. I have been lecturing them all winter. [Laughter.]

Mr. Cox. I am afraid that my friend is too good-humored. He ought to use something in his lecturing beside mere easy talk. A little of the lash might do some of his party friends good. [Laughter.]

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. The use of the lash has almost gone out even with the negroes. It may still be retained upon that side of the House. [Laughter.]

Mr. Cox. No, sir, it is not. The gentleman can see how perfectly free and easy we are over here. [Renewed laughter.] There is no sort of coercion or compulsion about us. Now, I want to say to my friend from Missouri just this about his propositions: they emanate, I know, from the very best of motives. He wants the negroes transported as soon as they are freed, but he is in a minority in his party.

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri.

It does not appear so.

Mr. Cox. He is in a minority among those who control his party. The men who control our legislation here are those who say that the negro, if he is born here, has the same right to live in America as the white man has; that he is entitled to freedom in locomotion and emigration; that you cannot force him out of the land of his birth, and that it is his inalienable right to be free. That is your language; that is your philosophy; and you yourself, sir, do not propose, in your own bill, any coercion of the blacks to make them go out of the country. Indeed, your bill repudiates compulsion. You cannot compel.

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. I am so thoroughly a democrat, and have such confidence in the people, that I believe that when you present to any people that which is for their best interests, they will adopt it. I do not believe, as the gentleman and some others seem to, that these people have not sense enough to do what is for their interest. I believe that negroes understand what is good for them as well as other persons do.

Mr. Cox. If these negroes will not go voluntarily, will you make them go after you free them?

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. So far as I am concerned, I have not the least hesitation in saying that I would be in favor of deporting these slaves when emancipated.

Mr. Cox. And that is your idea of the God-given right of liberty, is it? Oh!

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. Yes, sir; I would give them the right of liberty where they can enjoy real liberty, and not where, as in both the slave and the free States, they enjoy no liberty and nothing that makes liberty sweet to man. I go for giving them a country and a home, and complete liberty in that country, where they will be superior to any other

race.

Mr. Cox. Well, there is a great deal of good sense in that. The free blacks ought to be transported from this country; as Jefferson said, when free, they are better away from the whites.

Mr. BLAIR, of Missouri. I am sorry the gentleman did not vote with me, and show the same sort of good sense and consistency.

Mr. Cox. I am perfectly consistent, sir, but I never will vote for schemes like that of the gentleman, which proposes to create more free negroes, when we cannot as yet send off the free negroes we have; and because I believe that, in spite of every thing that he can do, it will entail

an expense that no people can meet, and that our people now cannot meet. I am with the gentleman in desiring to send the freed black men out of the country, or at least in preventing any more from coming into my own State. The State of Indiana excludes them, and I believe has, like the State of Illinois, a colonization fund to pay their way out of the country. I wish the State of Ohio had the same thing, and then, instead of the census showing in Ohio an increase in the ratio of the free colored population of our State over the whites, it would show a decrease in proportion to the white race, as is the case in Indiana and Illinois.

Mr. JULIAN. In the State of Indiana the black law is notoriously a dead letter upon our statute-book.

Mr. HOLMAN. The constitutional provision, and the law made in pursuance of it prohibiting the immigration of free negroes into Indiana, may be inoperative in that part of the State which my colleague represents, but I am very sure that in that portion of the State which borders upon Kentucky the people have deemed it necessary, as a measure of policy, and to protect their own internal interests, to enforce the law.

Mr. Cox. I think I must go on with my remarks. I have been led away altogether from the course which I had marked out for myself in regard to this bill. I intended to show the state of society in Hayti; something of its commerce; something of the condition of its Government, that we might see whether there is any propriety in our having a diplomatic functionary at that place, and having one from them in return. I shall, however, take an early opportunity of showing to this House exactly what I conceive to be the effect of these schemes of emancipation and colonization, especially in reference to the free negroes and their immigration into my own State. I made an issue the other day with my colleague [Mr. BINGHAM] on this subject, and I intend to pursue that issue, and to see whether or not the State of Ohio has the right, and should exercise it, to keep out these hordes of blacks that are now coming over into Ohio. I know we cannot send them to Hayti. They will not go there. The idea of the gentleman from Missouri is utterly chimerical. They claim the same right in this country that he has. In the meetings at which they have assembled in this city, the proposition to go to Hayti was made to them, and they voted it down. It was so in Boston

Mr. BINGHAM. Will my colleague have the kindness to let me suggest here, as he proposes to make an issue with me in our State

Mr. Cox. I joined issue with the gentleman the other day.

Mr. BINGHAM. I did not know that we had joined issue so very formally, but will he have the kindness to let me know how he proposes to dispose of these free negroes? He says he will not favor their compulsory emigration to Liberia: where will he put them?

Mr. Cox. I said not a word about compulsory emigration to Liberia. I would put them where the Constitution puts them. But one thing I will not do favor the equality of blacks with whites, either individually or nationally.

A few words before I conclude as to the Government of Hayti. The present state of Haytien society is divided into two political parties very distinct from each other-that of the blacks or pure negroes, and that of the mulattoes or mixed race. The former have the power, but are very

ignorant; the latter embrace all the educated classes, but are envied and suspected by the pure blacks, and therefore kept by them under a species of yoke similar to that of the "rayas" in Turkey. As an illustration of the extreme ignorance of the blacks, I will quote the words of President Pierrot, in 1845, who pretended that all Haytiens who, like himself, could not read, were to be considered blacks, and all those that read were to be deemed mixed. The Haytien black achieved his independence; but as he has always present to his mind the fact that he was a slave to the white, and has suffered under him, he naturally hates him, and all that have any connection with him. Hence the envy and suspicion he entertains against the mulattoes, whom he supposes to be the friends of the white, and to be plotting with him to bring the black back to slavery. He has a decided reluctance to every kind of improvement proposed by the white or mulatto, and he will not educate himself. The pure blacks are in the proportion of nine to one, and rule all. The administration of the Government is ignorant, improvident, engaged in nothing but uniforms and parade, inexplicable dumb shows, and "negro shows" at that. They have an army of forty thousand strong, in rags, and scarcely one-third armed, without any kind of discipline, almost without officers, and whose pay, small as it is, is neglected. They are the ebony counterpart of Falstaff's company when he used the king's press so damnably. They have a treasury, kept up by paper money, the nominal value of which, issued for one dollar, or gourde, has fallen to twelve cents! They have an excessive tariff on both imports and exports, from which the State derives its revenue. There is great corruption in all the departments of their Government.

Several MEMBERS. They are on an equality with this Government in that.

Mr. Cox. That remark might well apply to one Department; and if Hayti instead of Russia had been selected by a former Cabinet officer for his dishonorable retiracy, there would, I admit, be a sort of fitness of things. [Laughter.]

Thus I have recounted in a desultory way-for I did not expect Hayti in to-day-the condition of one of the finest countries in the world, which, had it been well administered, would really deserve its old name, "the Queen of the Antilles." This state of things is due to the fact that, for the last seventy years of their independence, the blacks have been confined to themselves, and have declined all improvement or instruction, either in law or economy. During this trial of seventy years the blacks have proved that they are not fit for government, nor competent for independence. The conduct of Spain, referred to by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. GooсH], proves this. To admit such a nation on an equality with this Republic, is as much of a caricature on international comity as the admission of a Port Royal contraband to a seat in Congress. It is an indisputable fact that Hayti, with a population of over half a million, and one of the finest soils on the earth, productive of the rarest articles, possessed of rich mines of gold, mercury, iron, and coal-an Eldorado-has for the past seventy years remained an unprofitable spot because of the inability of its people to raise themselves above the corruption, laziness,

improvidence, ignorance, and vice which seem to follow the undirected African wherever he goes.

It is said that England and France receive chargés from Hayti and Liberia. The Exeter Hall abolitionists have perhaps made it possible in London to have the negro recognized at Court; but I understand that except on Court days, when he is presented in that solemn scene of mockery, he is isolated and slighted, except it may be in the saloons of the Duchess of Sutherland or some other innamorata of the African. In Paris we know that any show from a puppet to a prince is a sensation; and besides, there was some reason why France should take Hayti under her protective wing. But unless gentlemen here propose equality, unless they intend abolition entire, there is nothing logical in their pressing this bill. So long as they suffer slaveholders and slave States to have or take any part in this Union, it is an insult to bring into the Federal metropolis this black minister proposed by the gentlemen. What is it for, unless it be to outrage the prejudices of the whites of this country, and to show how audaciously the abolitionists can behave? How fine it will look, after emancipating the slaves in this District, to welcome here at the White House an African, full-blooded, all gilded and belaced, dressed in court style, with wig and sword and tights and shoe-buckles and ribbons and spangles and many other adornments which African vanity will suggest! How suggestive of fun to our good-humored, joke-cracking Executive! With what admiring awe will the contrabands approach this ebony demigod! while all decent and sensible white people will laugh the silly and ridiculous ceremony to scorn.

TRENT AFFAIR.

SEIZURE OF SOUTHERN AMBASSADORS-RIGHT OF SEARCH IN TIME OF WAR-ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DOCTRINE.

On the 17th of December, 1861, I took occasion, in reporting a bill for the relief of the owners of the British ship" Perthshire," to discuss the matters involved in the Trent affair. A few extracts from the debate will furnish the preface to the more elaborate discussion of the rights of neutrals, which follows:

I would not to-day bring in this bill, if I believed that any inference would be drawn from its passage that it was dictated by any concession to British arrogance. I would not ask this House even to do a matter of right under a threat from Great Britain, or under the dictation of her arrogance or passion; but in order that we may demand our rights of Great Britain, we should always be ready to do right toward her. In the jealous defence of our maritime rights our officers may exceed their duty. The moment that is ascertained, as it is in this instance, the Government will take pride in according satisfaction. Our Government must do its duty in order to assert its rights. It is to be hoped that the action of this House, at least toward foreign powers, will show a wise and just con

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