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Page 27
Some time since a Senator from Massachusetts allowed himself, in an
elaborately prepared speech, to offer a gross insult to my State, and to
a venerable friend, who is my State representative, and who was absent
at the time.
Not content with that, he published to the world, and circulated
extensively, this uncalled-for libel on my State and my blood. Whatever
insults my State insults me. Her history and character have commanded my
pious veneration; and in her defence I hope I shall always be prepared,
humbly and modestly, to perform the duty of a son. I should have
forfeited my own self-respect, and perhaps the good opinion of my
countrymen, if I had failed to resent such an injury by calling the
offender in question to a personal account. It was a personal affair,
and in taking redress into my own hands I meant no disrespect to the
Senate of the United States or to this House. Nor, sir, did I design
insult or disrespect to the State of Massachusetts. I was aware of the
personal responsibilities I incurred, and was willing to meet them. I
knew, too, that I was amenable to the laws of the country, which afford
the same protection to all, whether they be members of Congress or
private citizens. I did not, and do not now believe, that I could be
properly punished, not only in a court of law, but here also, at the
pleasure and discretion of the House. I did not then, and do not now,
believe that the spirit of American freemen would tolerate slander in
high places, and permit a member of Congress to publish and circulate a
libel on another, and then call upon either House to protect him against
the personal responsibilities which he had thus incurred.
But if I had committed a breach of privilege, it was the privilege of
the Senate, and not of this House, which was violated. I was answerable
there, and not here. They had no right, as it seems to me, to
prosecute me in these Halls, nor have you the right in law or under
the Constitution, as I respectfully submit, to take jurisdiction over
offences committed against them. The Constitution does not justify them
in making such a request, nor this House in granting it. If, unhappily,
the day should ever come when sectional or party feeling should run so
high as to control all other considerations of public duty or justice,
how easy it will be to use such precedents for the excuse of arbitrary
power, in either House, to expel members of the minority who may have
rendered themselves obnoxious to the prevailing spirit in the House to
which they belong.
Matters may go smoothly enough when one House asks the other to punish
a member who is offensive to a majority of its own body; but how will it
be when, upon a pretence of insulted dignity, demands are made of
this House to expel a member who happens to run counter to its party
predilections, or other demands which it may not be so agreeable to
grant? It could never have been designed by the Constitution of the
United States to expose the two Houses to such temptations to collision,
or to extend so far the discretionary power which was given to either
House to punish its own members for the violation of its rules and
orders. Discretion has been said to be the law of the tyrant, and when
exercised under the color of the law, and under the influence of party
dictation, it may and will become a terrible and insufferable despotism.
This House, however, it would seem, from the unmistakable tendency of
its proceedings, takes a different view from that which I deliberately
entertain in common with many others.
So far as public interests or constitutional rights are involved, I have
now exhausted my means of defence. I may, then, be allowed to take a
more personal view of the question at issue. The further prosecution of
this subject, in the shape it has now assumed, may not only involve my
friends, but the House itself, in agitations which might be unhappy
in their consequences to the country. If these consequences could be
confined to myself individually, I think I am prepared and ready to meet
them, here or elsewhere; and when I use this language I mean what I say.
But others must not suffer for me. I have felt more on account of my two
friends who have been implicated,than for myself, for they have proven
that "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." I will
not constrain gentlemen to assume a responsibility on my account, which
possibly they would not run on their own.
Sir, I cannot, on any own account, assume the responsibility, in the
face of the American people, of commencing a line of conduct which in my
heart of hearts I believe would result in subverting the foundations of
this Government, and in drenching this Hall in blood. No act of mine,
on my personal account, shall inaugurate revolution; but when you,
Mr. Speaker, return to your own home, and hear the people of the great
North--and they are a great people--speak of me as a bad man, you will
do me the justice to say that a blow struck by me at this time would
be followed by revolution--and this I know. (Applause and hisses in the
gallery.)
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