Mr. INGERSOLL. Mr. Speaker, the truth is that the people are not so simpleor so easily deceived as these gentlemen in liigh positions suppose. This game they are playing will be uncovered, it will be detected by the people and condemned. Their whole game involves an apostacy and an abandonment of the principles which they once announced, and which We, in common with them, believed and sustained, and yet believe and sustain. Now, a word about this question of representation. I leave it to any gentleman on the other side of the House who is with the president on his reconstruction policy, whether or not, it is not held by him, and by those who support him, that the southern States are entitled to representation without conditions; that we have n right to impose conditions on the South prec (lent to their being represented in this Congress. That is their position, and that all you can ask is, whether the representatives can take the oath prescribed by law. Now N that I have stated the question fairly, let me ask, when did this right of representation accrue wthe southern States lately in rebellion? Was it last month or 6 months ago, or when was it? I hold this to be the position of the Union party on that question although I am unan thorized to speak for any but myself that if the southern States are entitled to repreSentation in Congress today they were entitled to representation in Congress the very day after the surrender of the rebel armies. What has been done to clothe them with rights with which they were not clothed on the cessation of hostilities? Nothing has been done by Congress giving them this right. Has the president a right to clothe the States with new pow ers? Or has hethe constitutional right to restore powers once lost? That belongs to the legislative Dept of the Government, an not to the executive. Where under the Constitution does he get any legislative power? No where. He claims that peace exists. Why? Because the rebels have ceased to H ht; because their armies have been disban ed; because the rebel power has been crushed. Not by any act of Congress does peace exist, but simply by reason of the close of the war. Does that fact give the right to these people of the southern States to representation? The President and the Democratic party say that it does. I deny it. It gives them no such right. If they had any right after the surrender of Lee, it was not by virtue of any action of the President. He can confer no such right upon them.