elfare in
all future time.

"2. Any amendment made at this time will be a partisan amendment.

"3. The members of this Congress were not chosen with reference to the
subject of constitutional amendment.

"4. Whatever amendments are now proposed by Congress are to be
submitted to Legislatures, and not to popular conventions in the
States; and most of those Legislatures are to be the ones now in
session.

"5. In submitting amendments at this time, we invite a dispute upon
the question of the degree of legislative assent necessary to their
adoption. If ratified by the Legislatures of less than three-fourths
of all the States, their validity will be denied, and their
enforcement resisted."

Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, replied to Mr. Buckalew's imputations
against New England. "The Senator gave us to understand that he had
not wasted reason, thought, and culture upon the stormy passions
engendered by the war, but now, when reason had resumed her empire, he
had come forth to instruct his country.

"The Senators from New England, unlike the Senator from Pennsylvania,
remained not silent during the great civil war through which the
nation has passed. They have spoken; they have spoken for the unity of
their country and the freedom of all men. They have spoken for their
country, their whole country, and for the rights of all its people of
every race. Their past is secure, and the imputations of the Senator
from Pennsylvania will pass harmless by them.

"When the Constitution was formed, New England had eight of the
twenty-six Senators--nearly one-third of the body; now she has twelve
of the seventy-two Senators--one-sixth of the body. Her power is
diminishing in this body and will continue to diminish. When the
Constitution was adopted, quite as great inequalities existed among
the States as now. The illustrious statesmen who framed the
Constitution knew and recognized that fact; they based the Senate upon
the States, and upon the equality of the States. They were so
determined in that policy of equal State representation in the Senate
that they provided that the Constitution should never be amended in
that respect without the consent of every State.

"The Senator suggests that the Senators from New England are actuated
by local interests and love of power in their action regarding the
admission of the Representatives of the rebel States. Nothing can be
more unjust to those Senators. It is without the shadow of fair