Mr. WENTWORTH. Mr. Chairman, the Constitution of the U.S. makes it the duty of the President from time to time to give to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. In his 1st message after the commencement of this Congress he dwelt upon the fact that there were certain States not represented as the most important information that he could give us, and he recommended as the most expedient and necessary of all measures that we give them immediate representation. He informed us of only what we and all our constituents knew before; and he admitted in that message that each House was the judge of the qualification of its own members. Having done what he conjectured to have been his duty, one would have supposed that he might there have rested, knowing that Sens&Reps had their responsibilities as well as himself. Instead of this he has been lecturing us upon the subject ever since. [Laughter] Scarcely a communication did he address to either House of Congress at the last session in which he did not repeat, and in almost the same words, the sentiments of his 1st message. Not content with this, as early as the 22d of February last, he commenced addressing promiscuous out door assemblages and dictating newspaper articles and telegraphic dispatches denouncing Sens&Reps even by name for their fidelity to the principles upon which they were elected; and o: the people should not understand his views he did what no President ever did before, made a tour of the States in which elections were pending and repeated his old story about States lately in rebellion. I understand that the expenses of this Presidential trip are to be, if they have not alread been, paid out of the public Treasury. I ji hold our ComAppropriat responsible for keeping all items for that trip out of their report. [Renewed laughter] If they are to come before us at all let them come in a separate bill and stand upon their own merits. I shall do my best to defeat any appropriation bill, however meritorious, that profor their payment. [Cries of “That is right. It is not the fault of the President if the people did not understand him when they recently uttered their wholesale condemnation at the polls. The present acting President has been not inappropriately compared to the other acting Presidents. I have been a member of Congress under the administration of them all. A doctor once said he could not cure all diseases “unless by some medicine they could be changed into fits; he was good on fits.” [Laughter] Now, while I would not venture to make many predictions about the conduct of the mass of mankind, I can predict exactly how a man will conduct if changed from a VEEP to an acting President. I am as good upon acting Presidents as the doctor was jo. fits. [Renewed laughter] They have l been, now are, and hence it is safe to say, ever will be, traitors to the party that elected them; and the people are id: of them. They, however, sustained Tyler in his 2nd congress; and they did the same by Fillmore. Both these gentlemen were able to carry their administration measures in the 2nd Congress of their terms. And the present Executive had an advan tage in the universal sympathy which the public had for the soldiers. Profiting by the boast of a former southern President, when told that he could not carry a certain obnoxious measurethrough Congress, “that the South was with him upon principle and he would soon make the North so on patronage, ” no sooner had he made up his mind to assassinate the Union party, as Booth had done its acknowl edged head, than he caused it to be proclaimed throughout the country that he intended to give all his patronage to soldiers. And he has appointed a few soldiers where they would pretend to be for his policy. For I view the support of the policy of this Administration by the mass of soldiersholding offices as mere pretense, justified perhaps under the idea of foraging upon the enemy. s!". laughter] In my own city, one of Mr. Lincoln's intimate personal friends was removed from the office of postmaster and a crippled soldier appointed his successor. He was confirmed by the Senate, and he sent to the Dept his bond properly. In the mean while, it was hinted that he had better go to the Philadelphia convention. This was too much for him. He could face rebel bayonets, shot, and shell, but a Johnson convention frightened him. [Loud and continued laughter] And so anotherman was appointed in his place. With all this pretended love of popular the soldiers, however, the elections could not be carried for the Administration. Impersonated bread and butter, speak if I misrepresent you. [Shouts of laughter] After the policy of the Executive has been almost unanimously condemned, after it is apparent that he will have a smaller number of supporters in the next Congress than any other Executive ever did have, he sends to Congress another message. And what does it contain’ It begins and ends with a mere repetition of his former messages and popular harangues. Out of 20 pages he has ten for traitors, and ten for all other subjects embra cing, according to his own showing, important financial exigencies and delicate foreign relations. The late Senator Collamer, when a member of this House, once told a story of a clergyman who had been in the habit of preaching the same sermon upon great occasions for several years.. On one occasion he asked an auditor how he liked the sermon. The reply was, “I always did like that sermon.” [Laughter] Go among the disloyal people who have always been rejoicing over the messages of the present President and ask them how they liked the late message, and the reply would everywhere, be that they always did like that message. [Renewed laughter] I read a newspaper account recently of an aged college president who was reading to his students a chapter in the Bible daily with the intention of reading the Bible through in course. Some roguish student daily placed back his mark until he had read the same chapter daily for a long time. [Great laughter] Perhaps some one has been playing a similar prank with our President. W. certainly are getting the same message all the time, and I wish for variety's sake that some one would change the mark. [Long and loud laughter] The President keeps telling us that he has done all that he could do to complete the restoration of the Union, and that all has been done that is necessary to be done except to admit representatives from the late rebel States. And then he kindly adds that the remainder belongs to Congress, and that each House is the judge of the qualifications of its own members. Now, if he feels that he has done his own duty, why cannot he be quiet and leave us to do ours? The Constitution defines his duties, and he professes to have discharged them. The same Constitution defines the duties of Congress, and its members profess to have discharged them. The people have reviewed the acts of Congress and indorsed them. Its members cannot change their policy without proving as false to the expressed will of the people as he has to the principles upon which he was elected to office. And men are sustained by their own convictions and by overwhelming majorities of the people, how vainly can anyone hope to change them. He has tried denunciation; he has tried patronage; what more can he do? I see it stated in some of his organs that the Administration is about to remove all the female clerks, mostly the widows and children of our soldiers and nurses in our hospitals. This cannot be to punish Congress, [laughter, l for had he supposed that radical Congressmen had relatives or friends among them he would have removed them long ago. [Renewed. } It must be to import disloyal voters into the District in anticipation of the effects of the universal suffrage bill, which we have this day enacted into a law. If he cannot carry a State he wants to keep this District. [Great laughter] Here I must digress to express my wonder at how Omnipotence turns, the intended evil of men into real good. When I 1st came to Congress colored men were carried through the city in shackles and sold at public auction. From the windows of the Capitol a horrid slave pen could be seen, and children would be shrieking around it trying to get, one more gaze at their agonizing parents sold for the southern market. But the rebellion came with all its horrors; the President was assassinated; the VEEP was debauched; yet from it all came not only the black man's enfranchisement, but his equality in everything that constitutes citizenship. The President well know. that the conqueror is always entitled to indemnity for the past and security for the future. Now, this Congress, in a spirit of compromise, offers to take either of these 2 things. But we cannot get the indemnity, according to his own showing in his messages detailing the destitution of the southern people, so we must insist upon the security; and that security is contained in the constitutional amendment. It would have been given long ago, and all the old, States would have been represented in this Congress had Mr. Lincoln lived, or had the present Executive pursued his policy. For there was a time when the States lately and still in rebellion would have complied with any executive exaction. But instead of asking the disloyalists to favor the constitutional amendment, he has done everything in his power to make them oppose it. And hence he is responsible for keeping them unrepresented is course reminds me of the celebrated fable of AEsop, entitled “The Wolf and the Lamb, ” and running somewhat in this way: A wolf and a lamb happened to come at same time to drink at a stream that ran down a rocky mountain. The wolf stood upon the higher ground and the lamb at some distance below him. The wolf made the stream so muddy that neither could drink and then qharged it upon the lamb, abused him, and finally tore him to pieces. The President is the wolf and Congress is the lamb.