Mr. COWAN. I do not think so either. Nobody believes that that is any punishment or any stigma or anything else upon those people; but i I were to select the honorable Senfrom Michigan and say to him, by law or otherwise, “ You shall not sit uponajury; you shall not sit in the Legislature; you shall not wear the ermine of ajudge; you shall not be Governor of your State or Senfrom that State, ” I should like to know what he would think of that. What would he say to his wife and children in explanation of that? “How does it come that our father cannot be ajudge, so good a lawyer as he is? How docsit come that he cannot go to the Senate of the U.S., eloquent and learned as he is, and superior to the men whom we are obliged to send?" What would be his answer? “ My children, I have committed no crime; my name shall come down to you pure and unspotted as it did from my own father; but I am the vic tim of a law which condemned me without hearing me, convicted me without a trial, and punished me not even by name, but by class." Iam reminded by my learned friendfrom Wisconsin [Mr. DOOLITTLE] that we ourselves made that apart of the punishment of treason; and the honorable Senators who think this joke is an answer to a pouderous argument, that this uip and quirk is to stand in the face of a great fact covering 11 States of the Union, voted for it. We ourselves made ita part of the punishment of treason. It is in the book; I need not read it. That is a fact; and yet we are: told this is no punishment. I ask again, and I defy gentlemen to put their finger upon a singlo instance where our race submitted to this, or submitted toit long. Impose that upon the southern States, pass this bill of attainder through the medium of an amendment to the Constitution, and the seeds of rebellion are there, and they will grow, and the feeling of this in justice will grow with it; and if redemption cannot come the children of the men you remder ineligible to olhce in a very short time. will themselves make a mighty army, an army not to be conquered in a cause of that kind. No, Mr. President, let us treat these people fairly, let us give them their rights under the Constitution and the laws; and if they merit punishment, let us mete that punishment out to them by the law, not by bills of attaiiider or expostfacto laws, not by making a law as amendments to the Constitution. If we can maintain the Union at all, we can maintain it in that way. If we cannot maintain it in that way we cannot maintain it at all. I am aware. Mr. President, that this is a fore gone conclusion. I am aware that it was decided that something must be done, and I know how dilficult it was to ct that something into being, to get that unlic ed bantling into shape. I know how ion the period of parturition has lasted. And; Mr. President, I nib afraid, too, that if it had not been from pride of precon ceived opinions it would have been strangled by its own mother at the instant of its birth. I believe she would have been glad to get rid of it if It had not been for that pride. But it is here, it is to go through, it is to be proposed to the people; but relying upon the people, upon the sense of the people, I have no fears for the result.