Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/185

 PRESTON S. BROOKS no disrespect to the Senate of the United States or to this House. But if I had committed a breach of privilege, it was the privilege of the Senate, and not of this House, which was violated. I was answer- able there and not here. They had no right, as it seems to me, to prosecute me in these Halls ; nor have you the right in law or under the Con- stitution, as I respectfully submit, to take juris- diction over offenses committed against them. The Constitution does not justify them in making such a request, nor this House in grant- ing it. If, unhappily, the day should ever come when sectional or party feeling ^ould run so high as to control all other considerations of public duty or justice, how easy it will be to use such precedents for the excuse of arbitrary power, in either House, to expel members of the minority who may have rendered themselves obnoxious to the prevailing spirit in the House to which they belong. If I desired to kill the senator why did I not do it? You all admit that I had him in my power. It was expressly to avoid taking life that I used an ordinary cane, presented to me by a friend in Baltimore nearly three months before its application to the **bare head" of the Massachusetts senator. I went to work very deliberately, as I am charged — and this is ad- mitted — and speculated somewhat as to whether I should employ a horsewhip or a cowhide; but knowing that the senator was my superior in 175