Mr. COWAN. Mr. President, I should like to inquire of the honorable Senfrom RhdIsland what provision he proposes for the purpose of determining who are the guilty persons at whom he aims. Who shall try, who shall determine their guilt? because that is most important. To insert merely a prohibitory provision without providing any, means by which the persons stigmatized would be fixed, set apart from the rest of the society, is simply a nullity. Another question I should like to put to the honorable Senator. However doubtful the question might be as to the " of the sev cral States of the Union, I think nobody ever doubted that the inhabitants of the DistCol owed a direct and personal allegiance to this Government, that to them it was a complete, perfect Government in all respects. It is said some of them have violated the laws of that Government. Now, I would like to ask the honorable Senator upon what principle heretofore recognized among civilized governments he can impose upon them any pen alties except those which the laws impose, and how they can be imposed in any other way than by the law, and how he can propose to do that in the face of the plain, provisions of the Constitution which forbid bills of attainder and which forbid expostfacto laws. Now, if I understand him, he proposes to deprive persons who have been heretofore entitled to the right of voting of that right. That is punishment, that is penalty. Have they incurred it? Was there any law imposing that punishment upon any offense in this District heretofore? there was, then it may well be imposed now; but if there was no law of that kind, how can you now enact a law by which to bring about that result without encountering the difficulty of facing the expostfacto provision? If these were inhabitants of States holding to the theory that the primary allegiance was not due to the U.S. but to the State, then we might with some show perhaps attempt to perpetrate this thing. But they are citizens of the DistCol, residing here, and who owe direct and personal allegiance to this Government. It is their Government; and I ask upon what principle can the Government deprive them.P. right to a trial by the law, because it is not to be assumed that they are guilty. The law never makes that assumption. The very 1st principle of our law is the assumption that all men are in nocent, and that not even all the guilty are to be punished, but only those of the guilty whom you can show to be guilty according to the forms and provisions of the law beyond all reasonable doubt. That is the right of an American citizen. If he has not that right, what has he 7 It is the sum total of American liberty. It is the end and aim of this whole fabric. It is the result of 1800 years of struggle. Then when you meet a man who is alleged to have aided the rebellion, what does the law presume: The law presumes he is innocent. The question of his guilt is the 1st thing to be determined. The law is upon his side with its humanity, and it presumes him innocent. How is the fact to be ascertained? The constitution declares that it must be by due process of law. This is fundamental, elementary, lying at the bottom of the whole fabric. To take it away is to destroy everything that is sacred among us. Now, I ask Senators to apply this to themselves. What would you say if you were charged with a crime? If you are innocent you would claim the right of an American citizen to have a fair trial according to the forms of the law; and as the law does not know whether you are innocent or guilty it gives to the guilty precisely the same rights that you have. Now how can that he done in this 1) is trict? How is it possible? Is this offense to be found by a grand jury? Is that to be understood? If it is to be find by a grand jury, is it then to be tried by a petit jury, presided over by a judge learned in the law” And how is the judge to inflict this sentence; how is he to impose this penalty, a penalty, which you propose to make here on the 10th of December, 1865, long after the offense was committed? And yet you say that you preserve the principle that no expostfacto law shall be passed! Mr. President, with me it is a fundamental principle that citizens owe allegiance to the Government to which they are subjects, and that under no circumstance can those citizens incur any penalties whatever unless they be prescribed. the laws before the offenses to which they apply are committed. To impose them afterward is worse than all the tyrannies that have ever been denounced heretoforc. The 1st thing the tyro in the law is taught is to abhor the name of Caligula, and why? Not that he did not enact his laws before the hap pening of the offense, not that the laws were not prescribed and published before the offense; but o was denomoios in most horrific and crucl of all tyrants because he caused them to be written in small letters and posted upon the tops of high posts, so that the people could not read them, and then after his people had violated them, imposed the penalty. That was humanity itself compared with this mode of imposing a penalty. That was a cruelty which might have been surmounted by a step ladder; but here is a cruelty contemplated for which there is no remedy and there can be no remely. No man can tell what punishment his conduct may deserve if it is not to be determined until after he commits the crime. Now, Mr. President, ail this thing is simple; it is within the reach and grasp of gentlemen who love the Constitution and love the laws. If there is any man in the DistCol who has committed the crime of treason, here is a Government over him which has af. fixed a penalty to that crime, which has all the machinery ready to try him, ready to convict him, and ready to enforce the penalty to the utmost. Why should we overturn all that is sacred in the past; why should we wish to stul tify ourselves at this late day in setting aside all this wise provision which has been tested by time and ages, and resort to this trifling. I bog pardon, I have no wish to offend by saying “trifling, ” but it is trifling. A man who commits treason, the highest of all crimes, is to be discharged upon being deprived of the right of suffrage! I am not one of those who believe that all participation in the late rebellion was treason, but I am of those who do believe that treason was committed against this Government; and I say that if a man from this district, within the shadow of this Capitol, who could have been protected by the power of the U.S. here, went away and joined himself with those who were making war upon this Government he was guilty of treason; and to tell me that he has incurred no other penalt than that of being deprived of the right o suffrage is trifling, and trifling with the most sacred of things. what is to prevent such a man being punished, and punished by the law of You talk about punishing traitors; but if there are such people. are they not punished You have courts and juries, you have all the machinery here, and you have, as I said before, victims within your grasp. If you want to vindicate the law, do so, the law that you prescribe; not upon high posts, not pitfalls that you dig for the citizen, but vindicate the laws you have enacted solemnly, which are upon your statute books, and which are the will and the embodiment of the will of the American people, whose will is to be so much respected. i. there any difficulty about it? Who alleges a difficulty? Who says it cannot be done? Whoever says it cau not be done asserts the failure of the Government, because that Government which cannot enforce its laws, which cannot impose the penalty they prescribe, and which cannot punish the guilty actording to their process and according to their provisions, is no Government at all; it has failed in the very thing for which it was established. Then, Mr. President, in this District especially, where this is undoubtedly the Government: where there is no double allegiance; where there is no double system of laws; where there is no conceivable difficulty about the duty of the citizen and the line he is to take in regard to his country, I object to this. I object to this amendment, in the 1st place, that it provides no mode by which the offense can be ascer tained; in the 2nd place, that it imposes a punishment which is or post facto;. in the 3rd place, that it is trifling with the highest crime known among men. What would the honorable Senfrom RhdIsland say if there were a dozen murderers in the District and he were to propose to exclude them from the right of suffrage? How he would shock the sensibilities of the whole community if he were to propose to discharge them upon such a condition as his amendment discloses here.