Mr. HOWE. No, there does not seem to be. I believe the catechism has been greatly improved smce that period. “As soonas the questionsgot abroad a form of answer. drawn up with admirable skill. was cir culated all over the kingdom, and was generally adopted. It was to the following effect: 'As a member of the House of Commons, should I have the honor of a seat there. I fully shall think it myduty carpto weigh such reasons as maybe adduced in debate for and against a bill of indulgence and (lien to vote according to my conscientious conviction. As an elector, I shall give in support to candidates whose notions of the duty 0 a representative agree with my own. As a private man.it is my was to live in peace and charity with everyhody.’" A very good form of an answer. Whethei i it was referred to to any extent by those distinguished Cabinet officers who were visited by a serenading party the other night, and cate chized in much the same way, and whether any of their responses were framed upon this precedent or not, I do not know. This was in 1687. In 1688 the' dismissed lieutenants of counties were restored to favor and to place. The committee of Privy Councilors were dismissed from whitehall and disced, and the King himself was a fugitive from his realm, and no man has since occupied his throne who supported his policy. Sir, history is useless if it do not guide and animate us in the discharge of our duties. Mr. President, somethings have been said, and some incidents have transpired, since this debate commenced in January last which I propose to notice, although they are not very material to the debate itself. We seem to have parted company here. Gentlemen who met in this Congress at the beginning of the session representing the same party, upholding the same cause, commissioned to the same work, seem no longer to work together; and it has happened unfortunately, very unfortunately for the cause, very unfortunately for me, very unfortunately for the State that I have the honor in part to represent, that my colleague and myself seem to have parted company in this time. My colleague some time since thought he had occasion to admonish me that the present POTUS was not elected by the Whig party. I believe he was entirely correct in that statement. I really never had said or supposed that he was elected by the Whig party, and I did not quite understand at the time, andI do not quite understand now, what the necessity was for reminding me of so obvious a truth as that. It istrue I did once belong to the Whig party. If, according to my colleagues’s understanding of the os el plan, that is the one unpardonable sin; if atis that blas hemy against the Holy Ghost which never can e forgiven in this world or in the world to come, I must submit to the consequences. I really was very honest and sincere, however, when I belonged to the Whig party. I really did think the Whig party tried to serve the country according to the best of its li bt and judgment; and I thought its light and itsjudgment were about as good as there were going. I think so still. I continued to serve it u to the time when in 1854 that party made its last struggle to defeat the repeal of the Missouri compromise; and when found it, by reason of the defection of its southern members almost in a body, entirely unable to do anything to resist the tide of slavery aggressions, then, sir, I abandoned the Whig party andI united myself with the only party which seemed to me to promise some hope ofeTTectin g such a resistance. fhat is the extent of my guilt in that behalf. My collea e took occasion to say in substance that' e cared nothing for parties only as means to ends, but when we came down to principles we would find him there every time. f be had said that simply by way of paying tribute to his own steadfastness and stability I should not have felt called upon to dissent; but when he parades it rather as a reproach to those who no longer act with him than as a commendation of himself, it seems to me to demand some notice. I certainly do not stand here to deny that he is always true to principle; but I stand here to sayt atI do not think e is the only one who is always true to principle; and I must be allowed to add that, true as he is to principle, he is not understood to have been ways true to the same principles. I have understood that in 1848 my colleague was a member of a convention which assem bled at Buffalo, in the State of NewYork a convention of what was called the Free Democratic party. That convention adopted what, the called a platform. In that platform I fin this resolution, the closing one: "Received, That we inscribe on our banners. Free soil free speech free labor, and free men.’and under it we will aht on and fight ovor, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions." I do not know that my colleague was a member of that convention. I have been told so. If he was there and subscribed to this resolution, I have no doubt it truly reflected his convictions at that time, and that he was then true to that principle. But my colleague will hardly insist that he was true to the same principle in 1852, 4 years later, when in Racine he was opposing the candidate of the same party whose representative he was at Buffalo, and where he is said to have exerted himself to prove that slavery was of divine ordination, an to prove it from the Scriptures.