Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President, it appears to me that the amendment which the ComCommerce have recommended to this JtResolution very much improves it as sent from the HoReps. The honorable Senfrom 9 has correctly stated the essential difference between the 2 propositions, that of the House being to out orize the President to act in aid of the State and local authorities, and which proposition, therefore, necessarily implies the consent of the State and the municipal authorities who are invested by local regulations with present power over the subject, while the Senate amendment proposes to make a uniform system of quarantine under the paramount regulations of the General Government, which shall be coextensive, irrespective of State and municipal lines and boundaries, with the disease which it is sought by both processes to exclude from the country; and the simple qiliestion is, which is the most likely to attain the desired end? Now, I think it must be admitted by my friendfrom Maine that the cholera will not pay any regard to State lines. It does not now anything about State rights; it does not recognize the distinction between Federal and State authority; and, therefore, while one regulation may exist in NewYork which shall require a quarantine, if you please, of 30 days, another may exist at JerseyCity which only requires a quarantine of ten days, another at NewLondon, in Connecticut, or at Newport, in RhdIsland, having a different length of time and a different process of security; so that the result is without uniformity, that a regulation which is enforced with safety and security in one city, operating to the temporary disadvantage and injury of its commerce and disturbance of its trade, is evaded in an adjacent city to the advantage of its commerce and its trade, and by means of which the pestileuce which we all seek to exclude is introduced into the country. It appears to me that this is a subject which concerns the general welfare of the people of the U.S., irrespective of State or local organizations and irrespective of State boundaries. It concerns the general welfare, and therefore, in my judgment, it is the highest duty of the General Government to remote that general welfare if anything can a done by exercising its paramount authority over the subject. My friendfrom Maine suggests that there is doubt as to the authority of the U.S. I think he will reconsider that doubt and change his opinion, if it be his opinion that we have not the power, when he recurs to the cases which have been decided on the subject of the introduction of passengers, known as the passenger tax cases, in which the SCOTUS held, and rightly hold, that the States, while Congress under takes to regulate commerce at all, have no authority to regulate the admission of persons or merchandise from foreign countries iuto this. Therefore this concerns, in the most eminent and exact sense, that power which is granted by the constitution of the U.S. to us under the head of the regulation of commerce; and inasmuch as we must all agree that it concerns us all, inland States and inland districts as well as the sea board ones, ought we not assuming that we can frame and pass any law which wrll have any prospect of attaining the result to go as far as rudence and as courage will allow to accomplish it? Most certainly we should.