How much more should an innocent person be exempt from any such outrage!

It is when we consider the modern rule with regard to persons, instead of property, that we are impressed still more by its benignity.

Shall we at the same time violate the Public Faith and wreak a dishonorable vengeance on an innocent traveller or sojourner, making him the scapegoat of his country?

Shall we do this outrage to the stranger within our gates?

The other proposition is without example since the hateful act of the first Napoleon, condemned afterward by himself, when, at the breaking of the short-lived Peace of Amiens, he seized innocent Englishmen who happened to be in France, and…

He was unwilling to have anything to do with such an infamy.

You, too, Senators, should you unhappily yield to those who now insist upon violent measures, will regret the surrender.

You will grieve that your country has been permitted through you to fall from the great example which it owes to mankind.

Permit me to say, Sir, that, the moment you do this, you will cover the country with shame, of which the present bill will be the painful prelude.

You will be guilty of a barbarism kindred to that of the Abyssinian king Theodorus.

You will degrade the national name, and make it a byword of reproach.

With all the granting of legislation, it is solemnly proposed that good men shall suffer for acts in which they had no part.

The whole attempt is out of time; it is an anachronism, no better than the revival of the Prügel-knabe, who was kept at the German courts of former days to receive the stripes which the prince had merited for his misdeeds.

Surely, if anybody is to suffer, let it be the offending Government, or those who represent it and share its responsibilities, instead of private persons, who in no way represent their Government, and may condemn it.

In the seizure which is now proposed there will be absurdity to make the world shake with laughter, if for a moment it can cease to see the flagrant cruelty and meanness of your conduct.

My objection to the text of the bill which it is proposed to strike out is, that it is a proposal of unutterable barbarism, which, if adopted, would disgrace this country.

But here are documents lying on my table containing all the facts of record with regard to every American citizen who has been taken into custody abroad.

Why is it, if everything has been so smooth and so placid upon this subject, that both of the political parties of this country have seen proper to put in their platforms resolutions in reference to the rights of American citizens abroad?

I have not said that things were placid or smooth; but I have said that our Government has been strenuous and steadfast in the maintenance of the rights of American citizens, whether native-born or naturalized; and the record will show the…

I have been over every one of these cases; and I must say, as I read them I felt a new gratification in the power of my country, which made itself felt for the protection of its citizens in those distant places, and also a new sense of the…

There is no evidence that our Government has not been persistent and earnest for the protection of its citizens abroad, whether native-born or naturalized, and I alluded to Prussia only by way of illustration.

Here are the documents on my table, the passages all marked, which would illustrate the conduct of the British Government and the British tribunals toward every one of these persons whose names have been brought in question.

Already it has the power to do everything permitted by the Law of Nations, and it ought not to do anything else.

The honorable Senator would be very quick to demand the interference of all the powers of this Government in behalf of an arrested American citizen, if he were black.

But, Sir, those arrested happen to be of another color,--not a color which appeals to his sympathies, but a color that allows him to belittle their arrest and incarceration,--that enables him to say here in the Senate that our Government…