Mr. VADE. No, sir; no better right than all the people of the U.S or any of the people of the U.S.; but it was an utter absurdity to have an election of the people of the District and consult them to see where they would go, and leave them with a sovereign power, legislating and determining this great question bya vote of the people an act as transitory as a flash of lightning, where no record is to be left, no track to be followed up. You do not know to7day whether the ballot boxes were stuffed or whether the vote was legal or illegal. It is not in this transient way that jurisdictions over peoples are to be transferred. Sir, you would hard y sell a horse on such a contract as that; and yet your idea is that you may transfer, not only your juris diction over a territory given you, but give away the people with it as though they were dumb beasts subject to he sold from one juris diction to another. Sir, that is not an Amer ican idea. It may do in a despotism; but certainly nothing less than the sovereign power of the U.S. was necessary to make the transfer of the free people of the U.S. if anybody could do it. 1 have argued and attempted to show that it could not be done, especially that it could not be done without the concurrence of all that combined to do the act, and yet Congress undertook to single out a portion of the people of the District and sa, “We will vote away the sovereignty of. this Government that was conferred by all the States under the Constitution, and we leave it to a town meeting to say whether all this shall be annulled.” The absurdity is most apparent. No statesman ever dreamed of such a power, and if such a power exists, you hold your liberties upon a more feeble tenure than we ever supposed. Mr. President, Iam in earnest upon this' subject because I am impressed with its tran scendent importance. It is not like much of our legislation, a matter of a day or an hour. While we are gradually preparing this great capital to be the magnificent city of the world, where freedom and new forms of government shall be held up as a beacon light to entice the whole world to abandon the absurdity of their old Governments and come over to us, while we are preparing in this magnificent city to raise a Capitol commensurate with the growing greatness and grandeur of this great people, 'we are sufferiu the old disloyal statesmen of old Virginia, backed by a few of their cop per head associates over there, to take it all away. It will not do, sir. We are bound to undo what they have so ignominiously done. I wonder that the statesmen of Virginia had not more reverence for the great men of the preceding age, who, in view of the growing greatness and glory of this nation, had [laid the foundation for the magnificence of its capital commensurate with all that it was to be here after, than to throw it away as a thing unworthy to be taken. They had no right to do it. The law of 1846, for the reasons that I and other Senators have given, is utterly void. It was a nefarious attempt, not only to give away the magnificence of your capital and to give away its power of defense against an enemy, butit was a mean and contemptible attempt to mutilate and destroy that which the great statesmen of Virginia had contended for so so long and so earnestly. The act was void, Everybody adjudges it to be void, except my colleague on the committee, the Senfrom Missouri, who thinks that it was undoubtedly and unquestionably one of the best acts that was ever established in the'world. Sir, there is no question that it was a mere abortion, and would not stand the investigation ofa. court or a jury or a legislative body for a moment. The Senator says, then wh not go to law about it? Why not turn arena to your courts? Sir, what kind of courts have we had? Dred Scott decision ecurts; courts in which justice was a mockery and freedom a burlesque till the present time, or nearly till the present time: In ancient times who would have thought of brining such a question as this, which was devise and born in sin and iniquity, born of that spirit of disloyalty that has s read over the southern land and infected all their states men, before a court? And yet we are asked, why did you not do it 20 years ago? Sir, I would prosecute the devil in his dominions as quick as I would expect justice in such a court as that. This is the reason why the loyal people of this. District over there have suffered themselves to be sold out by a void law, which is a mockery in the sight of justice and liberty. They knew they could not 21 cal to any court that would uphold them. your court that decided the case of Dred Scott, a court under the domination Of a narrow partisanism that forbade any man to seek justice at their hands you ask me why they did not seek it there. Sir, it was not necessary that they should do so. This act was done in defiance of jnstice, right, and liberty, and in favor of secession and revolution. It must be an done. This magnificent capital, which was providently fixed and provided for us that we and those who shall come after us may rest secure from all outward oppression or interference, must not be granted awa, must not be mutilated, must not be handed over to any other jurisdietion. The majesty and the dig nity oflCongress require that we, the defenders of our own capital and of our own legislative Hall, shall not hand it over to be settled by courts anywhere. It is undignilied and wrong. Congress heretofore has passed an unconstitutional law, we will wipe it out, and let those who Oppose our act go to court, after we have put those affected by it right, and not leave them with this burden of sin upon them to overcome in order to get into court. Let us sweep‘it away, and then let those who oppose our action prosecute in the courts. Now, sir, I hope Congress will vindicate its own jurisdiction. I hope it will vindicate the providence of ourancestors. I hope that we shall not fail, so far as legislation is concerned, to put these most wronged and injured people back into the condition in which they were' before they were sold out by secession and rebellion. We owe it to them to do so. If there are any Union men there who were opposed to the secession of that State, and if we, the congress of the U.S., have brought this trouble upon them without their fault, should not a better Congress in a more enlightened age remove this act from them? Then if those who oppose the repeal wish to litigatethe question before the judicial tribunals, let them do so; but let. us reinstate the people there in the same condition that they were in before the act of retrocession was passed.