nment under which we live was created in a spirit of compromise
and mutual concession. Without that spirit it never would have been
made, and without a continuance of that spirit it will not be
prolonged. Sir, when the Committee on Style and Revision of the
Federal convention of 1787 had prepared a digest of their plan, they
reported a letter to accompany the plan to Congress, from which I
take these words as being most applicable to the bill under
consideration:--

And thus the Constitution which we now present is the result of a
spirit of amity and of that mutual deference and concession which
the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.

The language of that letter may well be applied to the present
measure; and had the words been recalled to my memory before the
report was framed I cannot doubt that they would have been adopted
as part of it to be sent here to the Senate as descriptive of the
spirit and of the object with which the committee had acted.

But, sir, the honorable Senator also stated, as a matter deterring
us from our proper action on this bill, that the shadow of
intimidation had entered the halls of Congress, and that members of
this committee had joined in this report and presented this bill
under actual fear of personal violence. Such a statement seems to me
almost incredible. I may not read other men's hearts and know what
they have felt, nor can I measure the apprehension of personal
danger felt by the honorable Senator. It seems to me incredible.
Fear, if I had it, had been the fear of doing wrong in this great
juncture of public affairs, not the fear of the consequences of doing
right. Had there been this intimidation tenfold repeated to which the
Senator has alluded, and of which I have no knowledge, I should have
scorned myself had I hesitated one moment in my onward march of duty
on this subject.

"Hate's yell, or envy's hiss, or folly's bray"--

what are they to a man who, in the face of events such as now
confront us, is doing that which his conscience dictates to him do?
It has been more than one hundred years since a great judgment was
delivered in Westminster Hall in England by one of the great judges
of our English-speaking people. Lord Mansfield, when delivering
judgment in the case of the King against John Wilkes, was assailed
by threats of popular violence of every description, and he has
placed upon record how such threats should be met by any publ