I would make the purchase an occasion of expressing sympathy with courage and fidelity under peculiar difficulties in the cause of our country.

Such a character is an example of infinite value to the Republic.

In the deserts of the East a fountain is always cherished as a sacred spot; such a character was a fountain in the desert.

I was impressed by the remark, for it seemed to me a key to this whole question.

The question, then, is, Which system shall be adopted,--open voting, or secret voting?

While I am entirely satisfied that at popular elections secret voting is preferable, and that every citizen, when about to vote at any such election, has a right to the protection of secrecy, I do not see my way to the same conclusion with…

A sound policy requires that the constituent should be able to see the vote given by the representative; but that can be only where it is open.

According to the principle I have already stated, elections for members of Parliament should enjoy the protection of secrecy, which they do not, while the representative in Parliament should be held to vote in such a way that his…

But I am disposed to believe that in not doing it we fail to follow the best example.

We are considering how men should vote in a representative capacity.

Much as I am in favor of secret voting at the polls, I cannot hesitate in declaring for open voting wherever men represent others.

Nor can I see any reason for secrecy in elections by a legislative body which is not equally strong for secrecy in voting on the passage of laws.

Republican institutions will gain by establishing the accountability of the representative, and I cannot doubt that this principle should be our guide in determining the manner of electing Senators under the National Constitution.

I do not forget that these islands, though originally discovered by a British navigator, are mainly indebted for their present civilization to the United States.

One of our countrymen, the late John Pickering, of Boston, the eminent philologist and scholar, invented the alphabet by which the native language was reduced to a written text.

Such are the ties of beneficence and of commerce by which we are bound to these islands.

No other nation there has an interest comparable in character or amount to ours.

They show that touching at the Sandwich Islands, on the return from China, would prolong the voyage so many days unnecessarily that an additional line of steamers must soon be established, provided the intercourse between China and America…

It must be a Japanese line, and nothing else; and you must not forget, that, just in proportion as you impose upon it any additional obligations, you will impair its efficiency as one of the splendid links of commerce destined to put a…

All the evidence which thickens in the air from that State, and has been darkening our sky during all this winter, shows that Tennessee has not that spirit of obedience in the body of her people.

Why, Sir, only this winter, the other House has been constrained to send a commission to Tennessee to investigate an outrage of unparalleled atrocity growing out of this very rebel spirit.

How can the Senate aver that the body of that people, thus saturated with the spirit of disloyalty, thus set on fire and inflamed by this hatred to the Union, have shown to the satisfaction of Congress a proper spirit of obedience?

History hereafter, when it takes up its avenging pen, will record the falsehood to your shame.

I challenge the Senator to cite the testimony showing a proper spirit of obedience in the body of her people.

A constitution which disfranchises more than one quarter of its population republican in form!