Mr. SHELLABARGER. If the gentleman will allow me to interru thim for one moment, I desire to inquire whet er, in his opinion, it is competent so to amend the constitution of the U.S. as to prohibita State from rebelling; and if itis, then why is it not competent to provide by amendment that a State may not pan the expenses of carrying on a rebellion? 1. ROGERS. It wonl be competent to amend the constitution of the U.S. so as to provide that a State shall be forbidden to rebel. By the constitution, as it now stands, the States are forbidden to rebel. Although it is not written in the constitution in exress words that no State may rebel, that no State may secede, that no State may withdraw from the Union, yetthe spirit of the constitution, the foundation stone which lies at the base of our whole structure of government, denies the right of any State to withdraw from the compact into which it entered when it, with the other States, formed the American Union. But that is not the question now before the House. A rebellion as taken place, a war has been carried on, a debt has been created, money has been loaned by individuals; and my proposition is simply to leave to the States concerned the right to say hereafter whether they will pay that debt or not. It is not the business of NewJersey of Pennsylvania, of Ohio, or of any other. tatc, to say whether Virginia, through the action of her Legislature or her people, shall pay her own debt, which, though contracted in an unholy cause, may be deemed in after ears, according to the judgment of her people or their descendants, necessary to be paid. do not wish to beuuderstood m standin here to argue in favor of paying that debt. am simply contending that there must be some limit to the power to amend the constitution of the U.S. fates. We have now before the ComJudiciary almost number less propositions to amend the constitution; and want to know whetherit is in the poWer of 2/3rds of both Houses of Congress with the concurrence of 3/4ths of the States, to amend that instrument in every particular, and them. thus rob the individual States of the most sacred rights which the have inherited rights which they intended should continue as a part of their sovereign power, and which, wisely, and in accordance with the genius of the institutions of this country, they have always been allowed to exercise I