PRESIDENT,--I have but one word to say, and it is one of gratitude to the Senator from Indiana for the complete adhesion he now makes to a principle of Constitutional Law which I have no doubt is unassailable.

The Congress of the United States will have forevermore the power to protect Reconstruction.

No one of these States, by anything that it may do hereafter, can escape from that far-reaching power.

I call it far-reaching: it will reach just as far as the endeavor to counteract it; it is coextensive with the Constitution itself.

No, Sir; it was there with a view to a practical result, to meet precisely the case now before the Senate,--that is, a seeming compliance with the requirements of our Reconstruction policy, but a failure in substance.

To that end Congress must look into the circumstances of the case; it must consider what the condition of the people there is,--whether this new government is loyal, whether it is in the hands of loyal people.

And so you may go through all these Reconstruction statutes, and you will find that under all of them the whole subject is brought back ultimately to the discretion of Congress.

I trust that Congress will exercise it so that life and liberty and property shall be safe.

Why are the loyal people of Virginia to be thus exposed?

When one begins to act with such allies, I can well imagine that he loses something of his original devotion to the great fundamental principles of our Government.

It shows how they are intending to press this measure through Congress so as to obtain for Virginia the independence of a State.

Are you ready to part with this great control which yet remains to Congress, through which security may be maintained for the rights of all?

It is nothing less than this: to secure the rights of all, without distinction of color, in the State of Virginia.

When I can secure those rights, when I can see that they are firmly established beyond the reach of fraud, beyond the violence of opposition, then I am willing that that State shall again assume its independent position.

In the name of Justice, in the name of Liberty, for the sake of Human Rights, I entreat the Senate to wait.

Is it reduced to this, that no petition can be presented unless the Senator approves it, or that no petition can be read at the request of a Senator unless he approves it?

Such a limitation on the right of petition would go far to cut it down to its unhappy condition in those pro-slavery days which some of us remember.

I think no candid person can have listened to that memorial without seeing that it contains statements with regard to which the Senate ought to be instructed before it proceeds to a vote.

This may be done in the interests of Freedom and Humanity, or in the ancient interests of the Rebellion.

I am anxious that this judiciary should be pure and devoted to Human Rights.

But if the policy is pursued which finds such strenuous support, especially from the Senator from Illinois, farewell then to such a judiciary!--that judiciary which is often called the Palladium of the Commonwealth, through which justice…

Instead of that, you will have a judiciary true only to those who have lately been in rebellion.

You will have a judiciary that will set its face like flint against those loyalists that find so little favor with the Senator from Illinois.

A little talking sometimes does a great deal of good; and that expended in the late canvass I heard in a voice of thunder on the 6th of July, when the people of your noble old Commonwealth declared themselves against vandalism, fraud, and…

Virginia has freed herself from the tyranny of a horde of greedy cormorants and unprincipled carpet-baggers, who came to sap her very vitals.