of his position against that proposition. It is to me a proposition of incontestable correstness that the great source of the evils under which we labor is to be traced to the dependent position which the State governments have been content to assume in the progress of the war, which in its large proportions has called forth the exercise of those powers which were reserved to the States, but which Congress has attempted to use, and in that attempt the State governments, from patriotic but, as events have shown, not wise motives, havarting from principles directly antagonistic, the Government of the United States and the Government of the Confederate States have practically arrived in matters of administration at the same result. In both, the suggestions of convenience have been regarded as the sanction sufficient for any conduct they might adopt. And the most ill-omened cry throughout the Confederacy is the one so frequently heard, that the force of the law is suspened, and the pressure of the war has borne down the authority of the Constitution. In the United States such a principle harmonized with the political dogmas there professed. In the Confederate States it was in violent opposition to the tenets, for the vindication of which these States seceded. The arbitrary course of the former Government was therefore the natural consequence of its doctrines, while such a course in our Government was utterly inconsistent with its purposes or its powers.

We have therefore presented int the whole progress of the war the startling contradiction of States united in a league for the support of their separate independence, called on to ignore, if not abjure, that independence. A compact of carefully guarded powers expanding into a government without limitation or responsibility. Guarantees for the liberty of person and protection of property, not only not respected, but so recklessly invaded that the retention of such prerogatives now seems rather a mockery than a guarantee. Whenever there has been an invasion of those guarantees of personal liberty and property, the citizen was paralyzed by the acquiescence of his State in the assumption by the common Government of its prerogatives; and if the State did manifest a purpose to assert its dignity and its right the cry that the arm of the common Government would be thereby paralyzed forced it to abandon its purpose and trust to the hope that a speedy termination of the war would terminate the forced and unnatural-I will not say undignified-condition in which it had been placed. As might have been expected, the exercise of powers which were never intended to be conferred upon the common Government has necessarily called forth an equally unauthorized administration of them. Impressment, for the sake of illustration, has supplied the place of contract. The order of a bureau accomplishes what Congress itself would not venture to do. The functions of a judge are transferred to some military officer. And the court of justice is closed by the denial to a magistrate of the power to inquire into the cause of a commitment. Arrests are made by order; detention is secured by command; and a power more gigantic than any crowned head in Europe would exercise is presented to us as the means by which we are to insure success in a struggle to establish a free government. It is thus that we have dried up the openings from which new courage and resh impulse could have been given to our people in this protracted contest in which they have been engaged. We taught them to know their States as their country, and in the defense of that country we have blotted out and hidden from their view those States which are that country.

Unhappily for us the lapse of time which has but served to multiply the cases in which the State governemtns have acquiesced in this wide