Mr. BINGHAM. I have but a few more words to say. I shall not trespass much longer upon the time of the House. The question I have been discussing is, sir, a grave and delicate question. It is because the bills concern the nation's peace and the reorganization and restoration of States that I ask that the bills be referred to the committee appointed for the very purpose of considering the reconstruction of those States. Let the bills be so referred and see if that committee will depart to the extent proposed from that measure as a basis of reconstruction which the people themselves are now considering. I cannot, Mr. Speaker, for the reasons which I have stated, pronounce the bill presented by my colleague [Mr. AsHLEY] anything else than a of anarchy. It sweeps away all the laws in those States; it declares the laws and all acts done under them void, and subjects the people thereof to such laws as may hereafter be enacted. In the mean time, until that here after comes, by what laws are the 12 million citizens therein to be governed 2. Why, sir, a people without law, either to restrain the law less or to shelter the just, are as a people without hope and without God in the world; most miserable. I repeat it, therefore, the bill is a bill of anarchy, and not a bill of restoration I look upon it as a bill to place hinderances in the way of restoration, and therefore I ask that it may be referred to the ComReconstruction. I look upon both these bills as a manifest departure from the spirit and intent of our constitutional amendment. I look upon it as an attempt to take away from the people of the States lately in rebellion that protection which you have attempted to secure to them by your constitutional amendment. I do not say that all of those people are entitled to mercy or consideration at the hands of the American people and of their representatives in Congress assembled, yet I do say that there is something grander in magnanimity and mercy than there is in stern, relentless, even handed justice. A great people's power shows likest God's when mercy seasons justice. Vengeance is not duty, nor forgiveness crime. The amendment before the loyal people and about to be approved I trust by them and made part of the Constitution, secures to all, even to those who organized conspiracy against the nation's life and offended by their crimes as men never offended before since nations began to be, “the equal protection of the laws.” In what is soon to be the nation's measure for restoration and unity there is neither confiscation nor banishment into returnless exile, but forgiveness, by which that great body of guilty criminals are restored to the privileges of citizenship and guarantied the equal protection of the laws. I know those conspirators have ridged your land all graves; over with I know that 400,000 of the bravest and noblest of the Republic have fallen by traitor hands, martyrs in defense of your country and mine, of your Constitution and mine. In the presence of this great crime and the wrongs thus inflicted, this proposed act of general forgiveness and amnesty, securing to each, however guilty, the equal protection of the laws by the combined power of the nation, is a sublime humanity which challenges a par. allel since man was upon the earth. There stands the covenant: no State in this land shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. It was a needful provision. It is intended to hush the cry for.fagainst the guilty by the power of a sovereign decree, as that was done by the Supreme Power in the case of the 1st mur derer. All the guilty with the innocent, the just and the unjust alike, “shall all have the equal protection of the laws, ” and be held to answer only to the laws, and be condemned only by the laws. Stand by that great amendment for equal rights and equal protection. There is strength in it; the strength that abides in an inviolable justice. There is peace in it; that peace which comes of laws which are just to all and oppressive of none. The gentleman would stay the people in their wise purpose by enacting a law to take from a million men the immunities and privileges of citizens. Let the question be decided by the people. Whatever that decision may be I will bow to it; if they accept the amendment I will stand by it; if they reject iIt will then do whatever it seems to me my duty, under the powers committed to me as a Representative of the people, authorizes and requires me to do. But until that question is passed upon I protest against this proposed legislation, so utterly foreign to the spirit of the pending constitutional amendment and to the manifest will of the nation.