Mr. COWAN. I know what the honorable Senator simply says, and I know what anybody may simply say, but that does not alter the thing. You cannot make that which is punishment to be not punishment by merely saying “I do not intend it as a punishment.” That will not do. The thing is a punishment and I have the highest authority for saying so. 'I have that authority here before me. At one time othere was a motion made in the other House to inquire of Mr. Webster how he disposed of the secret service money of the Government, and in the debate which followed upon that occasion John Quincy Adams, than whom I.". no man could be higher authority as a learned man, as a jurist, as a statesman, as among the head and front of men of whom American citizens are proud, said that the deprivation of the right of suffrage he considered the highest punishment that could be inflicted upon a man; and yet here in the broad light of day, in the open Senate, among the elite of American men, if there be such a thing, a senator gets up and asserts that this thing which would sting an honorable man to the quick, which would debase and degrade him, which would stigmatize his children, which would wound him beyond the pangs of death, in the language of John Quincy Adams, that this is no punishment. Why, Mr. President, it is impossible to carry the absurd and the ridicu lous beyond that. No punishment! No punishment to ostra cise a man! No punishment to deprive a man of that right, the highest and the holiest, and most sacred which the law has cast upon him No punishment to deprive him of it! Mr. President, it is the hoknown to the law even when it is inflicted by due process of law Was it no punishment to the epoy that if he bit off the end of a greased cartridge he should become a pariah, that he should be thrown out from his caste, that he should be disqualified among his sect? It was that which made the recent rebellion in India. Talk about its being uo punishment! To say that it is no punishment is to insult the commonest, plainest principles of our reason. It is to suppose that a man is destitute of nerves; it is to suppose that feeling within him has been paralyzed and made incapable of being wounded by any indignity. Mr. President, I am sorry that it has been necessary for me to argue this question. I agree with gentlemen that this is within the control of the community. I have said so. I say that the community of Pennsylvania by a convention of her people, or by the legal mode pointed out in her constitution for its amendment, may deprive large classes of citizens of their franchise, and there is no punishment in it, there is no disgrace in it; but I declare today that the Legislature of Pennsylvania cannot with all its sovereignty and with all the rights conferred upon it take away from the humblest citizen of Pennsylvania his right to the franchise by way of punishment and because he has been guilty of any offense. Mr. President, I have only to recall to the recollection of the Senate, and especially to the recollection of the honorable Senfrom Maine, that which transpired at the last session. A question arose in this body whether it were competent for Congress to deprive those who had taken an active t in the recent rebellion of their right of suffrage. What law yer ever had any doubt upon that question? And what was it that drove the committee of reconstruction, in order to avoid the difficulty and to overcome the barrier interposed by the Constitution, to resort to a constitutional amendment? If the 3rd clause, I believe it is, of that constitutional amendment could have been enacted by Congress, where was the necessity for making it a constitutional amendment? Only that necessity which was recognized by all lawyers who said that under our Constitution it would be in the nature of a bill of pains and penalties which was forbidden; or in another aspect of it, it would be an expostfacto law, imposing a penalty for a crime which had been before that time committed; and therefore it was that the high prerogative of sovereignty exercised by the American people in the amendment of their Constitution was invoked to avoid that very difficulty. Now, of the character of punishment, within the ordinary scope of legislative action, why was it that rebels were not disfranchised simply by act of Congress? Why was it necessary to resort to it? I can state to the honorable Senator that peers; it was the weight of the obligations of achieving the to achieve in the face of the Constitution. another question of the Senator. He alleges that I am not serious in the amendment I have moved, that I am not in earnest about it. How does he know? By what warrant does he under take to say that a brother Senator here is not serious, not in earnest. I should like to know by what warrant he undertakes to do that. He says I do not look serious. I have not perhaps been trained in the same vinegar and doctrinated into the same solemn nasal twa which may characterize the gentleman, an which may be considered to be the evidence of seriousness and earnestness. I generally eak as a man, and as a good natured man, I think. I hope I entertain no malice toward anybody. But the honorable Senator thinks that I want to become a Radical. Why, sir, common charity ought to have taught the honorable Senator better than that. I think no such imputation, even on the part of the most virulent opponent that I have, can with any justice be laid to my door. I have never yielded to his radicalism; I have never truckled to it. Whether it be right or wrong, I have never bowed the knee to it. From the very word “go” I have been a conservative; have endeavored to save all in our institutions that I thought worth saving. I suppose, in the opinion of the gentleman, I have made sacrifices; Isuppose I am in the condition of Dr. ius: “I have had losses.” Certainly, if any man has given evidence of the sincerity of his doctrines, I have done so; I have lost all of that, perhaps, which the Senfrom Maine may think valuable; I have lost all the feathers that might have adorned my cap by opposition to radicalism; and now I stand perfectly free and independent upon this floor; free, as interest, but free from all imputation of dishonor. I am out of the contest. If I had chosen to play the Radical; if I had chosen to out Herod Herod, I could have out Heroded Herod perhaps as well as the honorable gentleman, and 1 could have had quite as stern and vigorous a following as he or any other man, more than likely without asserting any very large amount of vanity to myself, [Mr. as I think, free, unquestionably free from all imputation either of interest or dishonor, to be told this is If the Senator wants to say anything, I will hear him.