Mr. TRUMBULL. Let the Senator keep cool. I undertake to say that a person holding office, who does not acknowledge his responsi bility to the law and his oath of office, at to a President, is not fit to be an officer. No officer is responsible to the President, but his responsibility is to the law under which he acts. The President is not omnipotent in this country. He does not create offices; he cannot appoint an individual to the humblest ofice in the land except in pursuance of the Constitution and the aw. He himself is responsible to the Constitution and the law, and so is the most inferior. postmaster in the land. This idea. that the o ces of this country belong to the President, that men eat his bread and but ter, is very erroneous. Why, sir, the President feeds nobody. It is derogatory to the position of any man who holds an office total of his eating the bread and butter of the President and bein responsible to the President and not to his 08.51 of office, to the law and the Constitution. Why, sir, who ever heard of such a proposition as that laid down by the Senfrom Wisconsin, that a bill excluding men from office is a bill of pains and penalties and punishment? The Constitution of the U.S. declares that no one but a native born citizen of the U.S shall be POTUS. Does, then, every person living in thi] land who does not happen to have been born within its jurisdiction undergo sins and pen alties and punishment all his iife, because by the Constitution he is ineligible to the Presidency? This is the Senator’s position. But he tells us that there is no necessity for this clause; and why? Oh, we have a law that excludes from office every one of these individuals. Have we? How long is it since the Senfrom Wisconsin stood up in this body and with loud voice proclaimed to the Senate and the nation that each House should judge for itself whether members should be admitted into the body, dad that Congress had no right to decide upon it? Now he tells us that we have a law which excludes all these persons from office, and he does not want it in the Constitution. How long is it since he argued and urged here that the Senate should decide for itself whether the rebellious States were fit to be represented or not? Today he tells us we have a law which prevents each House from admitting disloyal persons. I am glad the senator is disposed to obey the law; and I trust we shall hear no more of his saying that it is for the Senate exclusively to decide, irrespective of law, whether persons are to be admitted to seats. I know that each House is the judge of the elections, the qualifications, and the returns of its own, members under the Constitution; but each Home is not made the judge of whether there isa constituency authorize to representation or not. That is a question proper to be decided by the joint action of both Houses. Each House may have the physical power to decide it, but Senators have no right to vote that the representatives of Maximilian in Mexico, of Napoleon in France, or of the people of Canada, shall be admitted to seats here; and they have just as little right to admit the representatives of any other people not recognized by law as entitled to representation, as they have to admit representatives from Mexico, or France, or Cana a But the Senator says that this provision excluding leading rebels from office will not be accepted in the South. Sir, has it come to this that the leaders of the infamous rebellion who undertook to overthrow the Government, who marshaled armies and maintained a war against it for 4 or 5 years, when put down by force of arms cannot be deprived of the privilege of holding offices? The Senator says teSouth will not accept it; but, sir, they have gone further than this in Maryland, in Tennessee, in WestVirginia, in Missouri. Everywhere in the South where loyal men have the control they not only exclude the leading traitors from office, but also from the right of suffrage.