Mr. RAYMOND. I do not wish to be in. terrupted. I cannot consent to fritter away my limited time in colloquies. After I get through the gentleman can have an opportunity, if the House consents, to answer anything I may say. I know how eager gentlemen often feel to answer on the spot; but I submit to my colleague that it is not a violation of courtesy if I decline to permit him thus to interrupt me. Now, I say that the proper course for this Congress to take is to establish in the southern States some government which will meet its ideas of justice and of right, and then send just as many troops as may be necessary to maintain the authority of that government and to enforce the laws it may enact. What form of government, that shall be I will not now attempt to decide: I, can imagine a great many forms that would be far preferable to the resource now proposed. I would prefer greatly the bill introduced the other day the honorable member from Pennsylvania, {Mr. STEvens] which proposes that the people of each of those States shall organize new governments for themselves. When Congress has decided upon such a course as that, then I say send the Army there if necessary to support that government. I would greatly prefer to this bill the organization of territorial governments for those southern States, because then we would have at least an organized civil authority from which laws and regulations might emanate. I do not enter upon any of the disputed questions which the institution of such governments might raise. Upon some points I should have doubts as to our power and as to the propriety of the specific measures proposed. I say that either of those measures is far preferable to the one which we are now called upon to adopt. I would even prefer that this Congress, if it be deemed necessary, should appoint civil commissioners for each State. Name them in the bill if you are not willing to trust the naming of them to the chief Executive. Let those commissioners organize tribunals of some sort, and then let the Army support their decrees. What I insist upon as fundamental, unless we are to abandon all pretense of self government and republican institutions, is that we shall not clothe subaltern officers of the Army with the unrestricted power of life and death, with absolute authority over the liberties and the property of our fellow citizens. It is not in harmony with our institutions. It is not a precedent that we should be willin to establish. It is not such a precedent as oft secure respect for this nation and for this government anywhere on the face of the earth. Will it aid the cause of democratic Government to exhibit this great Republic this model, as we have sought to make it, of what every republic should be abandoning all the functions of civil government, abrogating every thing like civil authority over 1/3rd of our domain and 1/3rd of our people, and for very imbecility and inability to agree upon any measure handing over the control of this section and these people to the absolute and sovereign will of a boi. general in the regular Army? Will that aid the cause of free republican government anywhere on the face of the earth? It is the last resort of a decayed and dying republic. If we have no better resource than this, we may as well do at once what this would seem to be a preliminary step for doing: invite the regular Army to take control of the whole country, install itself here in the capital as the central, sovereign power, and make such laws and issue such decrees as it may see fit. Now, sir, these are the leading objections which occur to me to the bill now proposed. I could mention many others if I were to trace in detail what I think will be the operation of such a system as that now attempted to be in augurated. I could point out many respects in which I think the bill would do far more evil than good. I see in it nothing which tends in the slightest degree to the restoration of peace and harmony in the Union or to strengthen confidence among the people or a hope that we shall ever again have a free republican Government, emanating from the people and protecting the rights of the people upon this continent. The enactment of such a bill as this, the establishment of such a rule as that which is here proposed, will disturb business confidence everywhere. It will hold back men who are now looking forward to engaging in their usual avocations of life. It will keep capital from the southern States; it will check the flow of emigration thither. Men will not seek homes and cast their fortunes where the absolute will of a brigadier general is the only security they have for either. My colleague {Mr. Hotchkiss] says a bill was introduced the other day by the Gentfrom Pennsylvania, which was referred to the ComReconstruction, and he drew the conclusion that it was so referred in order that nothing might be done on the subject. On the contrary, it was so referred that it might be digested and put into shape so as to command greater support than it was likely to do as it stood. It was the intention of the House in sending it to that committee to perfect it and not to supPress it. If that committee cannot agree upon the details of any bill of reconstruction it is time we had a committee that can. We seem to sit down helpless and hopeless under the inability of that committee to do what it was created for the exPress purpose of doing; and because they can devise nothing of a civil nature adequate to the emergency it is urged we must fly to the most violent measure theingenuity of man could devise. Let me remind gentlemen that this has been the history of popular Governments every where, the reason of their downfall, their decadence and death. Difficulties occur in carrying out the principles of justice and liberty embodied in their constitution. Factions arise, each of which is more intent upon carrying out its own purposes than it is upon promoting the common good. Instead of trying to agree they try only to thwart and defeat each other, and finally in sheer desperation, and in order that neither may achieve a triumph over the other, by a common impulse they call in the Army and hand over to a commanding general the power they have found themselves unable to wield. Now, sir, before sitting down I wish to make a single remark in reply to the Gentfrom Pennsylvania, {Mr. THAYER] who charged the President with usurpation in the southern States and with having entered into secret negotiation with the leaders of the rebellion as to a basis of reconstruction. I confess I have seen no evidence of an attempt at such negotiation. I have seen a plan Presented in one branch of Congress with the suggestion in the public prints that the southern States might be in clined upon that basis to accede to the amendment to the Constitution adopted at the last session of Congress as a basis of reconstruction. I do not know what connection the President may have had with this programme. I am quite sure he could not have attempted anything in the form of a negotiation or be yond using his personal influence with the men in the southern States with whom he may be supposed to have influence in its support. The programme put before the country proposes in substance that the southern States.; adopt the constitutional amendment striking out the disability clause, but as an offset to that put ting in their State constitutions a provision for impartial suffrage. am not prepared to say that this plan shall be adopted, but I have no hesitation in saying that it is one worthy of more consideration from those who really desire impartial suffrage than some of them seem inclined to give it. ft is too important, too grave in its character, too promising in the prospect it holds out to be dismissed with a sneer at its origin, real or assumed. I see no reason why we may not secure by law, by a law which we may enact, all the real good which the disabling clause of the proposed constitutional amendment contains, and if then we can secure so great a boon as impartial suffrage in the southern States, I have yet to hear of any valid ground on which such a proposition can be opposed.