SPEECH OF PENDLETON. 487 able. He said, alluding to the freedom of debate in the British Parliament: * "I had intended to go back to those splendid demonstrations of English liberty which occurred at the time of our Revolution. I had intended to recall to you the words of Lord Chatham uttered time and again in the British Parliament against the then pending war in America. The inexorable hour rule bids me be brief. In January, 1776, he said: "The gentleman tells us America is obstinate, America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three million people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.' "And Mr. Burke, in 1781, after the surrender of Yorktown had secured the defeat of the British in America, exclaimed: "The noble lord said the war was not disgraceful; it was only unfortunate. For my part I must continue to call it disgraceful, not unfortunate. I consider them all alike, victories and defeats; towns taken and towns evacuated; new generals appointed and old generals recalled; they are all alike calamities; they all spur us on to this fatal business. Victories give us hopes; defeats make us desperate; and both instigate us to go on.' 'Give us back our force nor protract this burdensome, disgraceful, for it is not an unfortunate war.' * * * * "And yet, were they censured? Did the first gentleman of England' leave the Speaker's chair to move a vote of censure or expulsion? "But why go so far back? Within this year, in the French Chamber, Thiers, returning after twelve years of exile from office and honors, raised his voice for the liberty of France: 'Give us a free press; give us free ballot; give us free debate in these halls-these are the essentials of free government-and I will be a grateful and obedient subject of the empire. If you will not, I warn you, that as the Dauphin did not succeed Louis XVI, as the Duke of Reichstadt did not succeed the great Napoleon, as the sons of Louis Philippe are now in exile, so neither will this imperial Prince succeed to the throne of his father and perpetuate the dynasty of the second Napoleon.' And when, in the same debate, Count Morny, the President, rudely assailed a speaker who uttered like sentiments, and a Councilor of State followed it up by the use of the word 'traitor,' the indignant members with one accord rose * Congressional Globe, First Session, Thirty-eighth Congress, p. 1586-87. in their places and with irresistible authority demanded that the insolent menial of despotic power should recall and apologize for the offensive word. And shall it be said that in the American Congress there is less freedom of debate than in England under the house of Hanover, or in France, when she lies a helpless victim, scarce palpitating, in the grasp of a Bonaparte? The gentleman from Maryland, [Mr. DAVIS,] told us last night, in terms of eloquence which I cannot emulate, that when Lord Chatham, aged, feeble, wrapped in flannel and suffering from disease, came resting upon the arm of his still greater son, to address for the last time the British House of Lords, and to die upon the floor, he came to speak against the dismemberment of the British empire. It is true, and what did he say? I told you this war would be disastrous; I predicted its consequences; I told you you could not conquer America; I begged you to conciliate America; you would not heed my advice. You have exhausted the country; you have sacrificed its men; you have wasted its treasures; you have driven these colonies to declare their independence; you have driven them into the arms of our ancient and hated enemy, and now, without striking a blow, without firing a shot, cowardly under difficulties as you were truculent in success, you propose to yield through fear to France what you have refused as justice to America." Did it not occur to the gentleman from Maryland that possibly at a future day when the history of that civil strife shall have been reproduced in this land, another Chatham may come to this House and hurl against those who are now in power these bitter denunciations because they have shown themselves unable to make an honorable peace, even as they have been unable to make a victorious war? "The gentleman from Maryland paid a splendid tribute to the power of public opinion. He compared it to the sea, whose tidal waves obey the fickle bidding of the moon, and roll and swell and sway with restless and resistless force, and yet constitute the level from which all height is measured. But, like the ocean,' said he, 'it has depths whose eternal stillness is the condition of its stability. Those depths of opinion are not free.' Did he forget what "Woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep And mocked the dead bones which lay scattered by ?" "What sights of ugly death within mine eyes! SPEECH OF PENDLETON. 489 "Sir, if there be depths of public opinion where eternal stillness reigns, there gather, even as festering death lies in those ocean depths, the decaying forms of truth, and right, and freedom. Eternal motion is the condition of their purity. Did he think this resolution would for one instant retard its progress? Did he not know that the surging waves would wash away every trace of its existence? Did he suppose this puny effort would avail him? The rocks of the eternal hills alone can stay the waves of the ever rolling sea. Nothing but the principles of truth and right can stay the onward progress of public opinion in this our country as it swells and sways and surges in this mad tempest of passion, and seeks to find a secure resting place.” Before the vote was taken, the resolution was modified so as to make it a resolution of censure, instead of expulsion, and in that shape it passed by a large majority. Long and Harris certainly deserved the severest censure of the House, and the failure to expel them, shows how jealously the Amemerican Congress guarded the freedom of debate. The victories of liberty had been achieved by freedom of speech, and liberty of the press. These are the agencies by which the friends of freedom in the old world and in the new, have combated arbitrary power. By free speech and a free press, the free States were prepared to resist and subjugate the slave power. The slaveholders ever feared these great principles of American liberty. They suppressed by violence, free discussion in the slave States. The slaveholders' rebellion was an appeal from the rostrum and the ballot box to the sword. Freedom of discussion and slavery could not exist together. The slaveholders instinctively felt this; hence they suppressed by a mob, the free press of Cassius M. Clay, and murdered Lovejoy at Alton. They attempted to suppress free debate in the Capitol, in the persons of John Quincy Adams, Giddings and Charles Sumner. The Republican party have ever been jealous of all encroachments upon freedom of debate. It came into power with "free speech, free press and free soil" inscribed upon its banners. Mr. Lincoln tolerated the extremest liberty of the press, even during the war. It was during this session of Congress, that the pioneer abolitionist of Illinois, Owen Lovejoy died. He was deeply mourned by his associates in Congress, and by the people, but by none more than by Mr. Lincoln; although in many respects they were very unlike, yet there was a warm personal attachment between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Lovejoy. Mr. Lovejoy, though an extreme radical and ultra abolitionist, early appreciated the President, and always had full confidence in his anti-slavery policy. He defended the President from the attacks made upon him by some of the impatient anti-slavery men of the country who did not know Mr. Lincoln as he did. Only a few days before his death, Mr. Lovejoy, in writing to a friend, said: * "I have known something of the facts inside during his, (Lincoln's) administration, and I know that he has been just as radical as any of his Cabinet. * * * It is manifest that the great mass of the Unionists prefer him for reëlection; and it seems to me certain that the providence of God during another term will grind slavery to powder." Mr. Lincoln fully reciprocated the friendship of Mr. Lovejoy. In a letter written soon after his death, he said: My personal acquaintance with him, (Lovejoy,) commenced only about ten years ago, since when it has been quite intimate; and every step in it has been one of increasing respect and esteem, ending with his life, in no less affection on my part. It can be truly said of him, that, while he was personally ambitious, he bravely endured the obscurity which the unpopularity of principles imposed, and never accepted official honors until those honors were ready to admit his principles with him. Throughout my heavy and perplexing responsibilities here, to the day of his death, it would scarcely wrong any other, to say he was my most generous friend. Let him have the marble monument, along with the well-assured and more endearing one in the hearts of those who love liberty unselfishly for all men."† The vast military operations which were being carrid on, over a territory, continental in its magnitude, and with forces upon land and water, unparallelled for their extent, required expenditures so vast, as to call forth the predictions of the financiers of the old world, that the republic would break * Letter to William Lloyd Garrison, dated February 22d, 1864. down under the pecuniary burdens imposed. But the people with the same patriotic zeal which sent into the Union army during the war, nearly two millions of men, placed their property at the disposal of the Government. The revenues of the country, were increased by taxation, self-imposed, seven fold during the war. The popular loans, diffused through all the people, amounted to twenty seven hundred and fifty millions of dollars. To meet the accruing interest upon the public debt, and to defray expenses, the tariff of duties on imports was largely increased; and the system of internal revenue by taxation, 80 amended as greatly to increase the revenues of the Government. It was at the first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, that the Bureau of National currency was created, and Hugh McCullock, a distinguished banker of Indiana was placed by President Lincoln at the head of it. The Bureau of Military Justice was established, and Joseph Holt, a distinguished Unionist of Kentucky placed at its head. |