Against all strictness of law conscience must prevail.

If there are niceties and subtilties in the law, let them all be employed on the side of right and equity.

To this end, the process of Congress must go forth in such form as will best establish peace and security in that State under the safeguard of equal laws.

With the execution of this process Georgia will be a republican government in reality as in name.

An ancient sage has left in perpetual testimony, that the best government is where an injury to a single citizen is redressed as an injury to the whole nation.

In harmony with the saying of the sage is the fundamental law that protection and allegiance are reciprocal, so that the Nation owes protection in exchange for the allegiance it receives.

Surely we are not, if any State can without correction deny Equal Rights within its border, or in any way imperil the tranquillity of the Republic.

The judgments of courts, the arguments of Senators, with all possible learning and all possible skill, are impotent against that prevailing law which places the National Unity and the Equal Rights of All beneath the safeguard of the Nation.

It has now reached its natural death, and no resurrection ought to operate upon it.

I have on another occasion, and more than once, said, “Down with the taxes!”--and I repeat the cry now.

To impose it only on certain classes of incomes, or to impose it on all incomes, without regard to their origin, is alike subversive of sound principle.

It is not the voice of a political partisan, or of the representative of any Administration anxious to establish a system of taxation, but it is the voice of Science itself, speaking by one of its--I may say chosen authorities.

Our war is happily over, and I know no reason why the responsibilities and obligations assumed during that period should be prolonged now during the reign of peace.

And I know no better way to give our testimony to the end of the war than by stopping that taxation which was born of the war.

But I do not doubt that the same courage and fidelity which through long years warred against this prodigious Barbarism will continue determined to the end in protecting and advancing the work begun.

We, Sir, are a Republic; we are living under republican institutions; and, as I understand them, one of their essential elements is Education.

I would make the appropriation as large as that for the Agricultural Department; and I know full well the period is at hand when all of you will rejoice to make an appropriation for the Educational Bureau twice more than that for the…

The Senator said that he hoped we should take no backward step; and yet his speech and his proposition were a backward step.

Alas! too much blood has been shed, and too much treasure lavished, for this war to close with any such national stultification.

Allow me to reply at once, it has everything to do with it; it has more to do with it than the State of Ohio, inasmuch as in the Nation are all the States.

Ohio is only one State; all the States compose the Nation; and the Nation is responsible for the civilization of all the States.

The Nation is the presiding genius, not only of Ohio, but of all the associate States of the Union.

Therefore, Sir, should the Nation by every means in its power, by appropriation, by a department, by a bureau, by clerks, by officers, do everything possible to promote the interests of education.

If nothing else, information may be accumulated, statistics may be gathered, facts may be brought together, which can be laid before those interested in education all over our own country and in foreign lands.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.