by the amendments of the Constitution, and were not authorized before they were made, but there is no reason why Congress should be exempt from the rules it applies to others. The courts, at least, have grand-juries constituted under the Constitution and laws to inquire into all offences committed in their counties, but Congress has no such agency, and therefore is not as well adapted as the judiciary to ferret out the crimes that have been committed. The Executive has as much legal right to send officials acting under him to scrutinize and inquire into the acts and motives, and the causes of votes by members of Congress, as they have into his. When Congress says, its object is to learn whether the Executive has committed an impeachable offence, it misrepresents its motive. Until complaint is made, and a known crime committed and imputed to him, and Congress called upon to cause him to be impeached, that body has no right to search for crime. It will be early enough to examine into the matter when a definite charge is made by responsible parties and the proof indicated, as has been the case in every impeachment proceeding since the Government was formed. It is undeniably true that more crimes have been committed by and before these fishing-committees than they have ever brought home to others, and their motives are as objectionable as those they impute to others. They are got up, intended, and worked as political inquisitions, little better than the rack, tortures of religionists in days gone by, and more unauthorized. What right has the legis lative branch to engage in business outside of law-making? It cannot control the world, nor, as the evidence shows, perform that duty for itself. Crimes against the national laws it should leave to the Federal judiciary, and those against State enactments to the judiciary of the States, and leave the business of President-making and the general management of political affairs to the people at home, acting in their capacity of voting sovereigns.

These fishing-committees are not only unauthorized by the Constitution, but they are not sanctioned by any law of Congress If the Constitution had clothed them with power in general terms to make such investigations, it would require legislation to regu

late the time and manner of action, unless the authority had been directly devolved upon one House alone, as in cases of impeachment when properly presented. But there is not now even the form of a legislative act conferring authority upon one House to make these investigations. In the absence of any such law, from what source does one House derive its power to traverse the country and compel the attendance of witnesses at the expense of the Government? None such has been pointed out. It is simply the will of one House that directs the action taken. Will, not based upon law, is tyranny. If these fishing-committees must exist, let the law-making branch of the Government provide by law for their appointment and define their powers and duties, and bear the responsibility of making such a law.

Let provision be made defining the consequences of disobeying the law, so that the people can understand their rights, and govern themselves accordingly. Now the punishment for disobedience is provided after the offence is committed, contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, prohibiting the passage of ex post facto laws. But the act of one House imposing punishment, where there was no previous statute defining the offence, has not even the merit of an ex post facto law, because that takes the vote of both Houses and the approval of the President. In cases of disorderly conduct and disturbing the proceedings of one House of Congress, the offenders ought to be punished. But when and how the party is to be tried, and what punishment is to be imposed, should be provided for by law; and if this is not done, the proceedings are unauthorized and stand upon the same ground as the doings of these roaming committees. We are for a government of laws, and not of the will of any one man or body of men. This is part of the creed of the Democracy.

114. MR. LINCOLN'S PLAN OF RECONSTRUCTION.

The evidence is abundant that Mr. Lincoln was in favor of an early and simple mode of the reconstruction of the secession States, but not of restoration. The radical portion of the Republican party were deadly opposed to such liberal views. On the 8th of December, 1863, he presented, in a proclamation, "the best the

Executive can suggest," a plan of reconstruction, providing par don provisions, and permitting loyal men, not less than one-tenth of those who were voters at the beginning of the war, to form new State governments, offering each protection against invasion and domestic violence. A portion of the Republicans threatened to defeat his renomination, because of the liberal provisions in this proclamation, and thereupon passed a bill near the close of their session, in June, 1864, providing more stringent and difficult provisions, calculated to clothe the Republicans in such States with full power and control therein. Receiving this within ten days of the adjournment, Mr. Lincoln, instead of approving, appended it to a proclamation dated the 8th of July, 1864, in which he said: "I am (as I was in December last, when, by my proclamation, I propounded a plan of restoration) unprepared, by a formal approval of this bill, to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration; and, while I am also unprepared to declare that the free State constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same, as to further effort, or to declare the constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in States," he adds, that he is satisfied with the plan contained in the bill, as one very proper plan, and when the condition of things in the States should be satisfactory, he would appoint military Governors, as proposed in the bill. Afterward, he prepared a more perfect plan, which, after his death, was adopted by Mr. Johnson, for North Carolina, and published in his proclamation, dated May 29, 1865. Arkansas and Louisiana organized State governments, under Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of December 8, 1863, and elected and sent members to Congress from them, who were not finally received as such. Here Mr. Lincoln and the Republicans commenced diverging. His friends said Mr. Lincoln wished to be President of the whole Union-he had been only of a part-and to close his political life in peace, surrounded by a united and happy people. The leading spirits among his friends, and who still control in Congress, desired so to shape things at the South that a minority of Republicans could control those States, and thus, for

years, perpetuate political power in the hands of the Republicans. Mr. Lincoln had less anxiety on that point than in the restoration of the Union to as happy a condition as it was in before his election. In this he and the leaders of his party disagreed, though generally he was compelled to yield.

The Democrats were not for reconstruction, but restoration, requiring the States to recall and reverse all their illegal acts growing out of secession, and, on taking the proper oaths, return to their constitutional duties in the Union. Under this plan of restoration, which is what the Constitution and common-sense demanded, six months would have restored peace, harmony, and prosperity. Our Christian duty required us to forgive the erring and wicked. These were to be found both at the North and at the South. Refusing to do so will make them no better, nor, if we are Christians, would it make us happier. We do not envy the man whose instincts lead him to become an agent or colaborer of the keeper of the bottomless pit, in his abhorred labors of punishing those he may adjudge to be wicked. The Democratic plan of restoration was consistent with the Constitution, and the best, Mr. Lincoln's the next best, and that of the Republicans the worst, as bad as it can be made, and calculated to prevent the restoration of peace, harmony, and prosperity.

115.—THE INJURY INFLICTED UPON THE NEGROES BY THE REPUBLICAN MODE OF MANUMISSION.

Without considering the effect upon the business and prosperity of the South, by the overthrow of her system of labor, the instant manumission of the Southern negroes, without any preparation whatever, has been destructive to them and their interests. In New York, legislation began on the subject in 1799, and was finished in 1817, and emancipation completed under it in 1827, by which time both whites and blacks were prepared for it. Had it been thus progressive at the South, both would have been affected less injuriously. As it was forced upon the country, neither side was prepared, the negroes less than the whites. They had little or no education, no experience in providing for themselves, and no means to commence with. Even educated

white men, in full health, thrown upon the world, with large families, and without means, find it difficult to provide against want, even in prosperous communities. At the time of manumission, the South was not only destitute of the means of living, but property there had been destroyed during the war, and those formerly rich could hardly avoid actual starvation. It is but little better yet, the policy of Congress repressing all enterprise and investments by those who could control means if the country were in a settled state. We give some account of the real condition of the negroes from an eye-witness. Hon. Cave Johnson wrote, July 30, 1865:

"Seven of my negro men, and nine women and children, were seduced or forced into the Federal camp, leaving over sixty still on my farm, mostly old men, women, and children, that can scarcely support themselves on a good farm. They have become so demoralized as to be useless to the owners, and the only question now is, how to get clear of them? If turned loose, without some provision for their support, many of them must starve. There must be from fifty to a hundred thousand old men, women, and children in this State, and more than a million in the United States, incapable of supporting themselves by their labor, and, if turned loose, must become the tenants of poor-houses or jails. The owners will find much difficulty in supporting their own fami lies, without having them thrown upon their hands. . . . Four millions of paupers thrown upon the country must produce an amount of suffering appalling to every human heart, and but seldom, if ever, witnessed in any age or country. I should have sent mine off long ago, but have not been able to buy places for them, where they might have a chance for support, and to send them off without some such provision was an act of such cruelty that I could not think of it. The abolitionists give no aid. But this is not all. They cannot live in any comfort in the same section with their former owners, who will treat them as inferiors, and never submit to any thing like equality in legal rights and social claims."

Subsequent events have shown this picture underdrawn. It is now conceded by all who understand the matter that more