Is there any one who doubts, after what we have seen on a large scale, that the President, for the time being at least, ought to be deprived of the extraordinary function he has exercised?

Therefore I say that it is matured, so far as necessary, and there is no reason why the Senate should not act upon it.

Why postpone what is in itself so essentially good?

Why put off to some unknown future the chance of applying the remedy to an admitted abuse?

Is there any one here who says that this is not an abuse, that here is not a tyrannical exercise of power?

It is very easy to answer an argument, when you begin by exaggerating consequences.

That new occasion is the misconduct of the Executive of the United States; and the new duty is, that Congress should exercise all its powers in throwing a shield over fellow-citizens.

But because it may not be our duty next year, and was not our duty last year, it does not follow that it is not our duty now.

I would act in the present according to the exigency; and if there is an abuse, as no one will hesitate, I think, to admit, I would meet it carefully, considerately, and bravely.

When to-morrow comes, if happily we see a clearer sky, I shall then hearken gladly to the Senator from Maine, and follow him in sustaining the old system; but meanwhile the old system has ceased to be applicable.

It was good enough when we had a President in harmony with the Senate; but it is not good enough now.

We owe it, therefore, to ourselves, and to those looking here for protection, to apply the remedy.

Now, Sir, I have a proper deference for the past; I recognize its lessons, and seek to comprehend them; but I am not a Chinese, to be swathed by traditions.

But, pray, what Senator, on an occasion like this, when we strive to place in the statutes of the country an important landmark, can allow himself to act under such influence?

And when I speak of duty, I speak of what I would emphatically call the duty of the hour.

I said that we are not to act absolutely with reference to the past, nor absolutely with reference to the future, but we are to act in the present.

Each hour has its duties, and this hour has duties such as few other hours in our history have ever presented.

Now, if you ask me in what this present duty specially centres, on what it specially pivots, I have an easy reply: it is in protection to the loyal and patriotic citizen, wherever he may be.

I repeat it, protection to the loyal and patriotic citizen is the imminent duty of the hour.

This duty is so commanding, so engrossing, so absorbing, so peculiar,--let me say, in one word, so sacred,--that to neglect it is like the neglect of everything.

Such, I say emphatically, is the duty of the hour, in presence of which it is vain for the Senator to cite the experience of other times, when no such duty was urgent.

I return, then, to my proposition, that the duty of the hour is protection to the loyal and patriotic citizen.

I answer plainly, Against the President of the United States.

There was no such duty on our fathers, there was no such duty on recent predecessors in this Chamber, because there was no President of the United States who had become the enemy of his country.

Meanwhile I shall insist always upon complete freedom of debate, and I shall exercise it.