Mr. AVIS.R.President, I do not repose to debate at this time the subject of the proposed amendment to the Constitution of the U.S.; but I will make a single remark in support of the view taken byt e honorable Senfrom Wisconsin in relation to his proosition to exempt from the effect of the amendment now riding all the persons who were forced involuntarily into the confederate service. I am somewhat surprised that it proposition so just, so humane, and so pol itic as that should not receive the unanimous sanction of the Senate. We all know that coercion and a power of compulsion to do a criminal act, which cannot be resisted by the party who is guilty of the act, exempts from culpability and punishinent. If that be a true principle in relation to crimes that strike at the peace and welfare of society, and which crimes are supposed, and in fact do generally, import a ngh degree of moral turpitude, how much more forcibly ought such a principle to be applicable to this proposed amendment to the Constitution. We know, as a matter of public history, that in some of the confederate States there was a universal conscription ofevery man who could carry a gun. In one of those States, at least, it swept throng. all classes, from boys of 16 to men of 60 years of age. These men were not allowed to choose whether or not they would enter into the camp and into the army of the rebellion. The whole country was hunted over to find every man who was capable of bearing arms, and, without regard to his own judgment or his own disposition to enter into the rebellion orto keep out ofit, he wesforeed by a resistless power to become a conseript in the rebel army. There were feeble old men and immature boys who were in great numbers thus forced into the army of the confederate States. Is there anything of justice, much less of policy and statesmanship, that requires that all those soldiers of the rebel armys iould be inexorably punished 'I NotWithstnnding the position assumed by the Senfrom Illinois, that a disqualification for office is no punishment, I maintain that it is a punishment, and agrievons punishment, and such as a great and generous nation, or the representatives of a.great and magnanimous people ought not to impose upon such a number of persons. I suppose that if the honorable Senfrom Illinois himself was to come in a class. in the form'of an amendment to the Constitution, that would exclude him during his life time from office, he would regard it as some punishment. It is punishment, and punishment of the most grievous and dislionoring character, for man to be excluded from taking part in the vernment Of his country by filling such an oli‘icc as those authorized to fill them might call him to the discharge of the duties of. But, Mr. President, there is another idea connected With this subject that has been forced on my mind. We know from the public prints and the history of the rebellion that late in the war about 1/3rd of the armies of the rebels deserted and abandoned their camps and their banner. That was an enormous desertion, and it could only have resulted from the fact that the greater proportion of them were forced into the service and were required to fight for a cause against which they were opposed in principle and sentiment and if left to their own free will would never have entered. This prescriptive amendment is to operate inexorably upon those who willed to go into the confederate service as well as those who were involuntarily, and by a force which was resistless by them. compelled to go into it. It embraces and prescribes during their life time those who were involuntarily forced into the service and who abandoned it and deserted it on the 1st opportniiity, as wellas those who went into it wn. a free and deliberate will, and continued in it to the end. In the language of the honorable Senfrom Wisconsin, what willa civilized world ‘ think of the justice and humanity, much less of the policy, of such a proscription as this? If the object of its friends was to prevent perpetual reunion and a return by the rebel States to loyalty and to true fcalty to this Government. it seems to me this would be one of the most effective measures that they could devise to produce such a state of things. I rose. Mr. President, not to enter into this debate, which I expect to do at a later period of it, but simply to urge this single consideration in support of the humane and just and statesmanlike proposition that the honorable Senfrom Wisconsin has offered as an amendment to this section of the proposed amendment to the Constitution.