Mr. BiNGHAM. There is nothing in the Constitution which, by implication or otherwise, ever did provide for the meeting of the Congress of the U.S. on a Sunday. The provision of the Constitution in relation to the times of meeting of Congress is as follows: “The Congress shall assemble at least once in c very year, and such meeting shall be on the 1st Monday in December, unless they shali by law appoint a different day.” The House will take notice that the Gentfrom Pennsylvania [Mr. Steve Ns] is quite mistaken in supposing that the Constitution takes no notice of and ignores Sunday. In the provision which I have just read the House will perceive that provision is made for congress to meet on the 1st Monday in December. This very text of the Constitution, naming a day of the week other than Sunday, affords an example which I respectfully ask this House to follow. If the framers had ignored Sunday as a Christian institution, in stead of providing for the assembling of congress on the 1st Monday of December, they would have provided for the 1st or other day of the month, careless whether it should occur on Sunday or any other day of the week. And I beg leave, further, to say in this connection, that one of the first men of this country, Chancellor Kent, of NewYork, was pleased to remind the people of the U.S. that Christianity was part of the law of the land. That Christianity, in other words, was recognized in your Constitution and laws; and I do not believe there is any sort of propriety or any kind of necessity for providing in terms by law, or announcing in advance, as has been said here, that it is our intention that the congress of the U.S shall be authorized or required by law to assemble and organize on Sunday. In this connection, I will call the attention of the House to a further provision of the conmore severe than those, would have been sub ! stitution, which reads as follows: " If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days(Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the congressby their adjournment preventits return, in which case it shall not be a law.” Thus the Constitution en its very face recognizes Sunday as a day not to be counted in the days for the performance of the secular duties imposed by the Constitution, and this exception in the text is doubtless made for the very reason that the framers of the Constitution were not unmindful of the words of the Congress of 1776, employed in the Declaration, in which it was declared that “a decent respect” ought to be had “for the opinions of mankind.” I therefore insist on my amendment. The question being taken on the amendment of Mr. it was agreed to.