"Mr. Pendleton asked the yeas and nays on ordering the main question, which were refused.

"And the main question was ordered to be now taken.

"Mr. C. J. Ingersoll asked the yeas and nays thereon, which were ordered.

"Mr. Jacob Thompson called for the reading of the proposi tion before the House, which having been read, Mr. Thompson asked for a division of the question.

"Mr. George W. Jones asked what the precise state of the question was.

"The speaker explained, and a brief conversation ensued on a point of order between the chair and Mr. Hamlin.

"Mr. Jacob Thompson inquired of the chair whether, if the amendment of Mr. Boyd should be concurred in, the question would not then be on the engrossment of the joint resolution as amended, and could not the question then be divided?

"The speaker said no; the question of division, if at all, must be taken now.

"And it was ordered, on a call to that effect in one or two quarters.

"The reading of the proposition was called for. Read.

"After a remark from the speaker that gentlemen called for the reading of the resolution, and then made so much noise that nothing could be heard, a brief conversation on a point of order took place between Mr. Milton Brown and the speaker.

"Mr. Winthrop said, if he correctly understood, the first branch of the proposition was precisely tantamount to the original report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. It was a question merely whether we should substitute one thing for another. He suggested, therefore, that, by general consent, the taking of the yeas and nays on the first branch should be dispensed with.

"Strong objections made.

"Mr. Boyd. 'Is it competent to divide this question when the committee have reported it to the House as an entire proposition? As such, I think the vote should be taken upon it.' "The Speaker. The chair has decided that question.' "Mr. Boyd appealed from the decision.

"Mr. Vance said that the chairman of the committee had positively decided that the proposition could not be divided.

After it had been reported to the House, a division was proposed. Could that be done in accordance with the rules of the House and the decision of the chairman of the committee?

"The Speaker. This question came up on a previous occasion in connection with a certain bill. The chair then decided that the proposition could not be divided. The chair, under similar circumstances, would so decide. But in the present case, the chairman of the committee reported a certain amendment. It came before the House in the form of a report. It contains two distinct propositions; and when the House comes to act on the question of concurrence with the report of the committee, it is competent for it to divide the question. The chair asks the clerk to read the precedent.'

"Which having been done, Mr. Boyd appealed from the decision. He simply wished, he said, to refer to the fact that in committee he had offered this proposition as a substitute for the original resolution. That was the report which the committee ordered to be made to the House as a whole, as a substitute, and now it was proposed to kill it piecemeal by dividing it. If such was not the report of the chairman, then he had not reported what the committee desired and instructed him to report. "The Speaker. 'No debate is in order.'

"Mr. Boyd. 'I ask simply that the vote may be taken upon the report of the committee.'

"Mr. Dromgoole rose to inquire whether the chairman of the Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union had not made a report of one simple amendment to the proposition originally submitted, and whether the only question now was not on concurring with the committee in their proposed amendment to the original proposition? If so, was it ever heard or dreamed that the question of concurrence was divisible?

"Mr. Tibbatts (the chairman) rose to a matter of fact. "The Speaker. This debate is all out of order.' "Mr. Tibbatts. 'I reported an entire substitute for the orig inal proposition; and I concur with my friend that the question is not divisible. I so decided in committee; and I recollect a case where I was myself overruled on a former occasion, although, as I think, against all rule, on a decision that a motion to strike out and insert was not divisible.'

"Mr. Houston proceeded to make a remark.

"The Speaker. 'The chair has again and again stated that the question is not debatable.'

"Mr. Collamer inquired, 'If a vote should be taken in reference to this question of concurrence, and the House should not concur in the last proposition, what would be the next question put?'

"The speaker said, 'On the engrossment of the joint resolution.'

"Mr. Collamer. Not, then, on the amendment which the committee made?".

"The Speaker. On the original resolution.'

"The question was then taken, Shall the decision of the chair stand as the judgment of the House?' and decided in the negative. So the decision of the chair was reversed; and the House decided that the question was not divisible."

No vote was taken on the immediate question of the passage of the resolution, for, says the record, "it was decided in the affirmative without a division;" but, on the question of ordering it to be engrossed for a third reading-a test of the ultimate fate of the measure-the yeas and nays were taken, and are found thus recorded:

"Yeas: Messrs. John Quincy Adams, Stephen Adams, Anderson, Arnold, Atkinson, Baker, Barringer, Bell, Benton, Biggs, James Black, James A. Black, Blanchard, Bowlin, Boyd, Brinckerhoff, Brockenbrough, Brodhead, William G. Brown, Buffington, William W. Campbell, John H. Campbell, Cathcart, Reuben Chapman, Chase, Chipman, Clarke, Cobb, Collin, Constable, Cullom, Culver, Cummins, Cunningham, Daniel, Darragh, Jefferson Davis, Delano, De Mott, Dillingham, Dobbin, Douglas, Dromgoole, Dunlap, Edsall, Ellsworth, Erdman, John H. Ewing, Faran, Ficklin, Foster, Fries, Garvin, Giddings, Giles, Goodyear, Gordon, Graham, Grider, Grover, Hamlin, Hampton, Haralson, Harmanson, Harper, Henley, Hilliard, Hoge, Elias B. Holmes, Hopkins, Hough, George S. Houston, Hungerford, Washington Hunt, James B. Hunt, Charles J. Ingersoll, Jenkins, James H. Johnson, Joseph Johnson, Andrew Johnson, George W. Jones, Seaborn Jones, Kennedy, Preston King, Lawrence, Leib, La Sere, Lewis, Levin, Ligon, Lumpkin, Maclay, M'Clean, M'Clelland, M'Clermand, M'Connell, M'Crate, M'Dowell, M'Gaughey, M'Henry, M‘Il

vaine, M‘Kay, John P. Martin, Barclay Martin, Morris, Morse, Moulton, Niven, Norris, Owen, Parish, Payne, Perrill, Perry, Pettit, Phelps, Pollock, Price, Ramsey, Rathbun, Reid, Relfe, Ritter, Roberts, Root, Runk, Russell, Sawtelle, Sawyer, Scammon, Schenek, Seaman, Severance, Leonard H. Sims, Albert Smith, Thomas Smith, Robert Smith, Stanton, Starkweather, Stewart, St. John, Strong, Sykes, Thomasson, Jas. Thompson, Jacob Thompson, Thurman, Tibbatts, Tilden, Towns, Trumbo, Vance, Wentworth, Wheaton, White, Wick, Williams, Wilmot, Woodruff, Woodworth, Yell, Young, and Yost-163.

"Nays: Messrs. Abbott, Ashmun, Bayly, Bedinger, Milton Brown, Burt, John G. Chapman, Augustus A. Chapman, Cocke, Collamer, Cranston, Crozier, Dargan, Garrett Davis, Dixon, Dockery, Edwin H. Ewing, Foot, Gentry, Grinnell, Herrick, Isaac E. Holmes, John W. Houston, Edmund W. Hubard, Samuel D. Hubbard, Hudson, Hunter, Joseph R. Ingersoll, Daniel P. King, Leake, Long, Marsh, Miller, Moseley, Pendleton, Rhett, Julius Rockwell, John A. Rockwell, Seddon, Alex. D. Sims, Simpson, Truman Smith, Caleb B. Smith, Stephens, Strohm, Thibodeaux, Benj. Thompson, Toombs, Tredway, Vinton, Winthrop, Woodward, Wright, and Yancey-54." So the joint resolution was passed.

It was then sent to the Senate, to which body the plan of our work does not, at this moment, require us to follow it, except for the purpose of stating general results. Details will find an appropriate place as we proceed with our labors. The debate, however, was one of the most interesting and extraordinary of which any trace can be found in our legislative annals. While the issues of peace and war were yet trembling in the balance, the Senate was absorbed in nice philological and metaphysical disquisitions as to what the intent and meaning of the President concerning the territory truly was; whether fifty-four degrees forty minutes did not, in fact, mean forty-nine degrees of north latitude, and vice versa. The usual interpretation of words applied to the language of the President failed, for some cause not penetrable by the eyes of ordinary mortals, to dispel the mystery. Lexicographers, cheerfully confided in by men as to all the common transactions of life, were abandoned in despair. The English language had ceased to be an intelligible idiom. Not the least striking char

acteristic of this state of uncertainty and confusion was, that he who, by one breath of his nostrils, could have dissipated every doubt, reposed in the White House apparently unmoved as alabaster, while the two divisions of his friends in the Senate were vainly endeavoring to expound his doctrine. Each of these divisions claimed him as its own-the one for fifty-four forty, the other for forty-nine. The alternations of hope and disappointment in the one and the other, as each appeared day by day to have gained some new light which would definitely solve the problem, were strange to look upon. To-day, a senator, peacefully inclined to the parallel of forty-nine, would make manifest, in an elaborate argument, the identity of the President's views with his own. To-morrow, a senator of the latitude of fifty-four forty would demonstrate, in words of fire, how deplorably benighted as to the views and objects of the President the senator of forty-nine had shown himself, and how impossible it was that the President COULD, even in contemplation, recede from the position he had taken before all mankind, and adopt that parallel.

One of these scenes is of so extraordinary a character, that we can not more interest our readers, we think, than by transferring it from the record of the 5th of March, 1846.

Mr. Haywood, of North Carolina, had been making a speech, the main object of which was to show the peaceful tendencies of the President on this disputed question, and his willingness to compromise on the basis of forty-nine.

"Mr. Hannegan then rose and said:

"I must apologize to the Senate for obtruding myself upon its attention at this advanced period of the day, particularly as I have already occupied its attention on several occasions in the course of this debate.

"Before I proceed to make any reply to the speech of the senator from North Carolina-the most extraordinary speech to which I have ever listened in the course of my life—I desire, through the Vice-president, to put a question to him which I have committed to writing. It is this: I ask him if he has the authority of the President, directly or indirectly, for saying to the Senate that it is his (the President's) wish to terminate the Oregon Question by compromising with Great Britain on the forty-ninth degree of north latitude?"