Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/436

 constitution of society. They are recognized in the constitution of man's salvation. The great Redeemer of the world enjoined duties upon mankind; and there is a moral constitution from which we have derived all the excellent principles of our political constitution—the great principles upon which our Government, morally, socially, and religiously, is founded.

Sir, I do not think there is anything very derogatory to our institutions in the ministers of the Gospel expressing their opinions. They have a right to do it. No man can be a minister without first being a man. He has political rights; he has also the rights of a missionary of the Saviour, and he is not disfranchised by his vocation. Certain political restrictions maybe laid upon him; he may be disqualified from serving in the Legislatures of the States, but that does not discharge him from political and civil obligations to his country. He has a right to contribute, as far as he thinks necessary, to the sustentation of its institutions. He has a right to interpose his voice as one of its citizens against the adoption of any measure which he believes will injure the nation. These individuals have done no more. They have not denounced the Senate, but they have protested, in the capacity of ministers, against what I and other Senators on this floor protested. They have the right to do it, and we can not take that right from them. They will exercise it. The people have the right to think, and they will exercise that right. They have the right of memorializing, and they will exercise that right. They have the right to express their opinions, and they will exercise that right. They will exercise their rights in reprobation or commendation at the ballot-box, too; and preachers, I believe, vote. They have the right to do so. They are not very formidable numerically, but they have the right to do this as ministers of the Gospel, as well as we Senators have a right to vote for the adoption of a measure; and if it is not in accordance with their opinions they have a right to condemn it. They have the right to think it is morally wrong, politically wrong, civilly wrong, and socially wrong, if they do not interfere with the vested rights of others in the entertainment of those opinions.

I understood my honorable friend from Mississippi to say that the South had been groaning for a long time under this oppressive measure. The South, sir, are a spirited people, and how they could have submitted, for more than a third of a century, to this indignity, this wrong, this act of oppression, which has ground them down in their prosperity and development, and never have said a word about it until this auspicious moment arrived, and that, too, when political subjects have been agitated at the North and South—that it should have been reserved for the action of the present Congress, after all others had glided by without complaint, rebuke, remonstrance, or suggestion of appeal, is a most extraordinary thing. My friend does not apprehend it; but there was no excitement out of this Capitol, or out of the city of Washington. It originated here. This was the grand laboratory of political action and political machinery. The object was to mature the measure here, and inflict it, by a coup d'etat, upon the nation, and then radiate it to every point of the country. The potion does not react pleasantly. There is a response, but how does it go down? Not well. The physic works—it works badly; it works upward.

I am wiling to receive any memorials that are presented to this body which are respectable in terms, whether they come from preachers, politicians, civilians, or from the beggars that congregate about your cities; and I will treat them