Mr. HENDERSON. The decision did not adjudge, I hope, a free negro to be a slave. The Dred Scott case did not deny that a State could have the franchise to a free negro. Nations, as weIl as individuals, Mr. President, some times backslide. There may be such a thing as a national fall from race. Communities sometimes retrograde. T in cases of individual reaction are numerous. We are yet doomed to see man more. Let individuals fall back if they see t, but let our action here be such as to insure rational and steady progress. The English Parliament and people traveled far along the road of human progress in their contests with Charles I. They feIl back, however, and for many long years the milestone then planted by them was lost to their vision. The rench Revolution, that most sublime convulsion of human passion and human aspiration, struck the shackles from 25 million icople, who, rising from the de radation and nisery produced by ages of misru eand o ression, proclaimed liberty, fraternit, cquaity to all men. Yet they soon fell bac from their advanced position. Their own excesses, their divisions, and irrational measures paved the way fora new dynasty. Louis XVI went to the guillotine, and Napoleon came to the throne. This is a most important epoch in our history. We now have 7 or 8 million dissatisfied, discontented, maddcned whites. They are to be restored to the body politic and made contented. The nation can be generous. It must be generous. But charity must not be converted into weakness. 4 million negroes comrningled with a hostile population, scarcely knowing whether they are s have or free, uneducated, immersed in overty ready forany scheme to benefit themscffes, and yet too igno rant to select the best means, they must be cared for, and a way be provided to give them contentment and knowledge and security for the future. They demand our sympathy, but that must be the sympathy of reasoning men and not the fruitless simpering of children. If we make mistakes now it will be many years before we can recover. Let none be made. But I may dismiss all questions affecting the policy of this bill, for it is enough that it is unconstitutional. To return to the pointfrom which I digressed, I repeat, that, for all purposes connected with this bill, in determining what is a RFG, we must look to the constitution itself, we must be controlled by facts and not by theories. Theory is good to induce a change of or auic law, but it is not good to authorize legisIation in the face of that law. Our forefathers, in fact, admitted the republicanism of Virginia with 293,000 slaves; the republicanism of Maryland with 100 and 3,000 slaves; that of NCarolina with 100,000, and SCarolina with 107,000. If these States could be republican in form with so large a number of flieir people in slavery surely the denial of suffrage alone could not, by any an alogy, take from them the character of republicanism. I would be glad to think otherwise, but I cannot force my mind to believe what contradicts the history of the time.