Mr. COWAN. Mr. President, I had not intended to say anything further, but I certainly did not suppose that I should be assailed by the honorable Senfrom Maine upon the subject of my law; and particularly I did not suppose that he, the champion as he supposes to ask him a of his wing of the party, would do it. He says that to deprive a man of the right of suffrage is not a punishment. Is it not a punishment when you make it a punishment, when you say that you do it by way of punishment and you tell why you do it? But he gets off on the shallow sophism that it not being a natural right society may take it away from a man. If the honorable Senator had been disposed to argue fairly as a lawyer always is the very essence of a lawyer is that he is always fair, always manly, always right up to the point he would have remembered that yesterday I distinguished between his case and mine. He says voting is not a natural right; it is conventional; it is bestowed by society; and if it is bestowed by society, cannot society take it away? I say eertainly society ean take it away; but what I said here was that society cannot take it away unlawfully; I said that the Constitution of the U.S. which was made to restrain us the same as laws are made to restrain the citizen forbids it, and I say you cannot take it away here until you alter the Constitution of the U.S. You cannot in this way deprive the humblest American citizen of any right. Before God, if there is anything in my country of which I am proud it is that no power in the country can deprive the humblest American citizen of his humblest right in the face of the law, because in this country the law is sovereign, not the Congress, not the President, not the court, but that silent, terrible vor populi of the American people which we the Constitution. I admit that if the honorable Senator proposes to change the Constitution he can limit the right of suffrage to whomsoever he pleases; he can deprive of it people who have been in the rebellion and people who have not been in the rebellion: he can deprive of it anybody. But this is not the function that he aspires to perform here. He proposes here upon the floor of the Senate, and in the face of the American Senate, sworn to stand upon the Constitution and the laws, to deal with an American citizen in this District, an American citizen owing direct and personal allegiance beyond all question, despite John C. Calhoun, despite Webster, and despite everybody. No. body dare deny that the allegiance is direct and personal in the District. This man, like the tyrant of old who would have scourged Paul, comes here and proposes to deprive an American citizen of a right by way of penalty, by way of punishment, for what? Because he says he took part in the rebellion. propose to try him? No, sir, he does not proDoes he e to try him. He proposes no intervention y a grand jury of this man's neighbors who are to be the judges of the testimony, of its truth, of the probability of the facts. He oposes no petit jury, no judge learned in the aw, none of the safeguards of American liberty. He tramples upon them all, runs right over them all, and proposes to punish au American citizen, and says it is no punishment. I say, Mr. President, as I said yesterday, that Caligula was a mild, humane tyrant compared to this.