right of this House, to say to the people, to the whole people of the Union- "Come one, come all, we will not hear you." But, says the gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Rhett,) have we not a plenary power, under the Constitution, "to determine our own rules of proceeding?" Yes, Sir, we have that power, and there is no appeal from our determination as to those rules. But power is one thing, and right is another. We have the power to do many things in this House which we have yet no manner of right to do. We are the final judges of the elec. tions and returns of our own members. And if a majority in this House, in its wilfulness or its wantonness, should see fit to give the seat in a contested election to a candidate clearly in a minority, or to admit to a right of membership on this floor persons under twenty-five years of age, or who have resided less than seven years in the United States, or persons who do not possess any other of the constitutional or legal qualifications of members, and something of this sort has been done, as I think, at this very session, there is no power elsewhere to revise or reverse our decision. We have the power, also, to adopt a rule of proceeding by which the yeas and nays shall not be recorded on a call of one fifth of the members present, or shall not be recorded at all; and, indeed, a majority of this House almost went this length at the outset of the session, in excluding from the records a full and intelligible statement of a question on which the yeas and nays were demanded and taken. We have the power, too, to suppress or expunge from our Journals any proceedings which we may not fancy to have the people find recorded there; and this proceeding, again, is not entirely unknown to this Capitol, or even to this House during the present session. But who can assert that we have any right to resort to such measures, in defiance of express provisions of the Constitution? Sir, it is plain that this power to determine the rules of our own proceeding must be held in subordination to other provisions of the Constitution, and must be exercised also with a due regard to the rights, the reserved or inherent rights, of the people. Our power over our own rules of proceeding is, indeed, an irrespon sible power. But this consideration should only make us the more anxious to ascertain what is its rightful and constitutional

limit, and the more careful to keep ourselves strictly within that limit.

It is contended, however, by the advocates of this rule, that it is not inconsistent with any provision in the Constitution, nor with any right of the people. The first article of the amendments to the Constitution, it is said, provides only that "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to petition the government for a redress of grievances;" and this rule is not a law. Sir, this is sticking to the bark of the Constitution with a witness to it! Can it be seriously pretended that it is consistent with the spirit and intent of this clause, that one branch of Congress should effect, by a mere rule of proceed ing, what both branches are prohibited from effecting by solemn statute? If the Senate and House of Representatives and the President combined, can pass no law abridging the right of the people to petition the Government, is it not, a fortiori, incompetent for this House alone to abridge that right? But I deny the propriety of this literal interpretation of the word law in the article in question. The first article of amendment, as it originally passed the House of Representatives in 1789, did not contain that word. Its phraseology was, "the right of the people to apply to the Government for redress of grievances shall not be infringed." This is the real gist of the provision. The Senate, in incorporating some additional matter into the same article, found it necessary to change the construction of the sentence. But it was a change of construction only, and there is not the slightest ground for the idea, that any change of the sense or substance was intended.

Why, Sir, this article of amendment, with many others, was adopted, as is well known, on the recommendation of a number of the State conventions, by which the Constitution was originally ratified. And in what terms did those State conventions recommend it? In what terms did your own State of Virginia propose its adoption? "Every freeman has a right to petition, or apply to the Legislature for the redress of grievances." This was the language of Virginia in 1789; and it was well said of it by Judge Tucker, in his appendix to Blackstone, that "it was the language of a free people asserting their rights," while the

language of the Constitution, he adds, "savors of that style of condescension in which favors are supposed to be granted."

But we are told by the gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. Rhett,) and again by the gentleman from Alabama, (Mr. Belser,) that this article was adopted in contemplation of a particular mode of abridging the right of petition; that it had reference to certain old English Riot Acts, which prohibited the people from assembling in tumultuous masses to petition the Government. Admit all that the gentlemen have said on this point. Admit that the language of this article was derived from the English Bill of Rights, and was originally aimed at some particular restraint upon the right in question. What then? Is there any thing in the article which confines its application, now and at all, times to come, to the particular mode of abridgment which first gave occasion to it? Sir, the phraseology of the article is com. prehensive and general. It declares that the right of petition shall not be abridged by Congress; not that it shall not be abridged in one way, or in another way, but that it shall not be abridged at all. Gentlemen might as well contend that the general statute of murder was only designed to prevent and punish those kinds of homicide which were in vogue when the statute was passed, as to contend that this article of the Constitution was only intended to prohibit those modes of abridging the right of petition which were contemplated at the time of its adoption. Upon this principle, if any ingenious villain could only discover some new mode of putting an end to human life, it would be "killing-no murder!" Such a principle would make a farce of all legislation.

But the honorable member from Alabama (Mr. Belser) has discovered sundry instances in which the British House of Commons have refused to receive petitions, and have even passed rules for refusing to receive them. And upon this discovery he has founded what he seemed to consider a most triumphant argument in favor of the constitutionality of the rule of this House. The argument, if I understand it, is this: that the refusal to receive petitions at discretion, was a well-known practice of the British Parliament before the adoption of our Constitution; that the framers of the Constitution must have understood and con

templated that practice; and that, therefore, in default of any express allusion to it, there is no reason for imagining that it was intended to be reached or remedied by the article of amendment in question.

Now, sir, I disagree to this argument altogether. I deny the correctness, both of the premises and of the conclusion. I maintain, in precise opposition to it, that, in the first place, the right to present petitions to the Government, including the right to have these petitions received, was an old, original, inherent right of the people of Great Britain, acknowledged and allowed from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. I maintain, in the second place, that the framers of our Constitution understood and appreciated this inherent right. I maintain, in the third place, that the refusal to receive petitions in certain cases, in the British House of Commons, was an exception to the general principles and general practice of that body, arising out of circumstances peculiar to those cases, and furnishing no justification for the rule which is under consideration here. And I maintain, in the fourth place, that there is abundant reason for the assurance, that the framers of the Constitution would have been the last persons in the world to sanction such refusals, or to consider them as in any degree furnishing precedents for us to follow. I am aware, Sir, that it is not often easy to prove the affirmative of propositions of this kind. But if the House will bear with me a few moments, I think I can show them, at least, that I do not speak without book.

And here, Mr. Speaker, if I had a whole morning before me, instead of the rapidly flying remnant of a little hour, I might bring to the remembrance of gentlemen not a few passages of English history of a most interesting and instructive character. I might go back to those great conflicts for civil liberty in the Old World, two centuries ago, by which our fathers were exercised and instructed for its establishment in the New. I might refer to days, on which thousands and tens of thousands of citizens were seen going up to Parliament, en masse, to present their petitions for redress; days, when the constituents of the immortal John Hampden were seen riding up from Buckinghamshire, each one with a copy of a famous protest which they had

adopted in his hatband, to petition against ship-money, and to demand the release from imprisonment of their gallant and glorious Representative; days, when fifteen thousand women, headed by the wife of an honest brewer, were seen wending their way with a petition to the very doors of the House of Commons; and when those doors were thrown open to receive them! And what was the moral of those scenes? Sir, in those days the champions of the popular cause relied greatly on the exercise of this right of petition to strengthen them in their struggles against the encroachments and exactions of the Crown. Petitions to the Parliament and petitions to the King were then among the most important instruments of the popular movement. There was even a time when the friends of freedom assumed the party name of Petitioners, and when the friends of prerogative and power were known by the name of Abhorrers-abhorrers of petitions! and these names of Petitioners and Abhorrers were as common and as general as Whig and Tory afterwards were, and designated respectively the same party divisions. And there is one little anecdote of those days, which I cannot forbear reciting with greater exactness. It is the anecdote of a man, whose real name is not recorded on the page of history, but who gave a name to himself which will not soon be forgotten; a man who seems to have foreshadowed something of the indomitable spirit on the subject of the right of petition, which has been so often manifested on this floor by my honored and venerable colleague (Mr. Adams ;) a man who went in person into the very presence of King Charles I., and presented to him a petition, complaining of some act of oppression and demanding redress. "How dare you," said the King, "present me such a petition?" "May it please your Majesty," said the man, "my name is Dare." He was rewarded for his boldness, not as my venerable colleague was on a well-remembered occasion, by a resolution of censure or impeachment, (telum imbelle, sine ictu !) but by a heavy fine and a long-continued imprisonment. If I remember right, Sir, the first child born in the Jamestown colony was christened" Virginia Dare," and perhaps the name was in honor of this stout and sturdy old upholder of the right of petition! This supposition, however, would involve a slight ana