CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



215 



words to the argument which he made, and to 

 which I listened with much pleasure. I mean 

 the argument that the men who made this Con- 

 stitution were so great that none who came af- 

 ter them are fit to lay hands upon it or touch 

 it ; that no alterations in the circumstances of 

 man, that no revolutions of Government, that 

 no change in human circumstances, can justify 

 the men of the present generation in attempt- 

 ing to improve in any the slightest particular 

 the work of the great statesmen who framed 

 the Constitution of the United States. 



" There is, in the last place, what I may style, 

 without intending any personal disrespect to 

 the gentleman from New York (Mr. Fernando 

 "Wood), who made it, the infernal argument. I 

 suppose that he would call it the ethnological 

 argument, hut with the sentiments which I 

 hold I cannot dignify it with that high-sound- 

 ing description. I call it the infernal argument. 

 It was the argument which was boldly advanced 

 by that gentleman, and which he attempted to 

 sustain here, that slavery was the best, the nat- 

 ural condition of the black race, the condition 

 to which it was decreed by Heaven, and that 

 therefore we should not struggle against the 

 natural and just condition to which Heaven in 

 its wise purposes had consigned them : 



u Sir, I shall not undertake, in the brief time 

 in which I intend to occupy the attention of the 

 House, to comment upon these various argu- 

 ments. Time would fail me to do so. I desire 

 to call the attention of the House more partic- 

 ularly to a branch of the first argument to 

 which I have referred in this brief review of 

 the debate on the other side of the House. I 

 desire to say a few words in regard to the ar- 

 gument made yesterday by the gentleman from 

 Ohio (Mr. Pendleton), concerning the lack of 

 power to pass the resolution which is now be- 

 fore the House. The words of the fifth article of 

 the Constitution on this subject are very ex- 

 press and clear. It confers upon Congress the 

 right to propose amendments to be adopted by 

 the States or the people of the several States. 

 It confers that power in language too plain to 

 be misunderstood. It is a direct grant of pow- 

 er. But the article that contains that grant 

 excepts from that power three particular sub- 

 jects ; and in relation to those subjects it denies 

 the power. The grant of power contains three 

 exceptions : first, no amendment shall be adopt-, 

 ed prohibiting the emigration or importation 

 of slaves prior to the year 1808 ; second, no di- 

 rect tax shall be laid except in proportion to 

 the enumeration of the census ; and third, no 

 State shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in 

 the Senate. Here, sir, you have the whole ar- 

 ticle of the Constitution. You have in the first 

 place an explicit grant of power, and you have 

 in the second place the specified subjects which 

 are excepted from that grant of power. 



" Now, sir, I have no doubt the gentleman 

 from Ohio is a very good lawyer, and is per- 

 fectly familiar with the maxim, expressio unins 

 est exclusio alterius. I am sure that no lawyer 



understands better the operation of that famil- 

 iar maxim than the gentleman from Ohio. Will 

 the gentleman therefore tell me, with this max- 

 im before his eyes, what the framers of the Con- 

 stitution meant by putting in it this grant of 

 power, and coupling with it three exceptions 

 from that grant ? I ask him if they did not 

 mean by that general grant to give it without 

 limitation except in so far as it is limited by the 

 specified exceptions ? "Will the gentleman tell 

 me why they enumerated the three subjects 

 which were excepted from the operations of 

 this power? Sir, the position upon the part of 

 those of us who contend for the undoubted ex- 

 istence of the power to adopt this resolution 

 rests upon this immovable base, that the powers 

 which are granted by the Constitution of the 

 United States are plenary, and that they have 

 no limits except in the rescriptions which the 

 Constitution itself contains. I deny the prem- 

 ise upon which the whole argument of the 

 gentleman from Ohio is founded, to wit, that 

 the grant of this power of amendment is a lim- 

 ited power. I contend, on the contrary, that 

 it is an imlimitcd power in common with all 

 other powers which are expressly granted in 

 the Constitution, except in so far as you find 

 a limitation of them in the Constitution it- 

 self. 



" The point that I make is that every power 

 granted by the Constitution is complete in 

 itself; may be exerted to its utmost extent, and 

 acknowledges no limitation except that which 

 is written in the Constitution. Now, sir, that 

 announcement of a principle contains nothing 

 new. That is a principle with which the gen- 

 tleman from Ohio (Mr. Pendleton) cannot pos- 

 sibly be unfamiliar, because it has been for years 

 the doctrine, the solemnly adjudged doctrine, 

 of the highest judicial tribunal of this country 

 in expounding the Constitution. It is the doc- 

 trine laid down by Chief- Justice Marshall in 

 Gibbons and Ogden. It is a doctrine which 

 has never been departed from by that august 

 tribunal .from the day on which Marshall and 

 his illustrious associates gave it utterance and 

 authority in the Supreme Court of the United 

 States. If it be said, as was said by the gentle- 

 man from Ohio and others, that that embraces 

 an absurdity, that if the power is unlimited, 

 any thing, no matter how much opposed to the 

 moral law, no matter how subversive of civil 

 government, may be tolerated under such a 

 construction of the Constitution, I answer, not, 

 sir, in my own language, but in the language of 

 that illustrious judge to whom I have already 

 referred : 



The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their 

 identity with the people, and the influence which their 

 constituents possess at elections, are in this as in many 

 other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, 

 the sole restraints on which they [the peoplej have 

 relied to secure them from its abuse. They are the 

 restraints on which the people must often rely solely 

 in all representative Governments. 



" "When you ask me, therefore, whether, if the 

 people of the United States were so to amend 



