Mr. COWAN. Exactly; and I give the honorable Senfrom Wisconsin credit for putting it in the most adroit, bamboozling, sophistical way that anybody could put it; and yet it does not amount to a bubble. The stupidest man in the galleries would detect it upon the instant. It is simply a play upon words. Why, sir, there is not the slightest resemblance between depriving a man of his pay and deprivin him of his office; and certainly if Senators ha given free play to their brains they would have seen the reason, and I should not be obliged to tell its 2nd time. This man holds his oliice by the law. He is entitled to his salary by the law. One of the contingencies upon which he holds his office is that he may be removed by the President, and he takes it subject to that contingency. He is notified of that at the time that he takes it; and to exercise that power upon him is no violation whatever of the contract. But to take away his pay, to strike at the sustenance of his wife and children, to leave him in a foreign and, perhaps to starve who ever heard of such a thing? Is that your rem edy ifyour minister misbehaves? Is there no other way by which you can get rid of him? Gentlemen say, what are we to do about it? This dominant party in Congress has got so thin skinned that a boy can hardly point at it in the street but that he must be carried into the public councils here and a great parade made about it. What is the country coming to? Is the majorit in Congress to be sacred? I always thought tint a majority in Congress was great and magnanimous, high toned, looking aloft rather than seeking about among the gutters to see who threw insults. They leave all the magnanimity to be exercised by the minority. But now if you are to remedy this by taking away a man’s pay and a man’s salary, you might just as well take away the pay and salary of the minority here. Where is the difference? If we do not speak to please you, if we do not criticise you in the most gentle phrase, and after the most approved method, orsooth, you will take away our pay! You had a great deal better do that than this. We might get home; but if you were to leave us in Portugal or in a foreign land we might not be able to get back. Where is the law that an American minister abroad is restrained in his free thought and free speech as a free citizen of this country? Where is the rule? Where is the custom and the usage? Nobody ever heard of such a thing. An American minister abroad has as mu right to criticise the action of his Government as anybody else has, and he ought never t3 yield that right. Certainly gentlemen here who proclaim themselves the advocates of the largest liberty and the largest free speech, and enjoying the largest amount of abuse that I have ever known any set of men to indulge in, ought. of course to allow an American minister abroad to write a private letter to a friend, even if that friend is indiscreet enough to publish it. If this man is an improper minister, if he fails to represent the dignity of the nation abroad, if he is incompetent, there is a remedy. The remedy is in the hands of the chosen officer of the Republic, your choice and my choice, and made so by the law and the Constitution. If we are not patriots, if we are not lovers of our country, we ought to be gentlemen enough at least to stand upon our contract. You clothed the President at the other end of the avenue with the right to appoint and remove these ministers abroad. You have agreed to it. You differ with a large number of your fellow citizens as to the way in which he exercises this power. Who is to decide? The law decides; the law provides for this difference of opinion; and when you happen to differ from the President in such a case you must submit, just as he must submit when you differ in exercising your proper functions here as against his opinion. But if the President will not remove this officer you have another thing that you can do. You can abolish the mission. You can fight the man fairly. If you do not like him you can at least treat him within your sphere and within the limits of your jurisdiction over his case, and do it fairly. If Mr. Harvey has offended apply the legal remedy; but do not let us violate our own national honor; do not lctus be false to the national faith, and do not let us repudiate our contracts. Let us pay him what we owe him, jnst as a common man is bound to pay his laborer; and because we are a great government and because we represent the sovereignty of the nation, we should be proud that no such blot or stain has ever been cast upon it, as I say this debate, even meeting the question here in this body, will inevitably cast upon it. Where is there a precedent for this in the history of the civilized world? I ask, when was it mooted before that a Government could violate its pledged faith to one of its public servants and refuse to pay hiqhis salary just because he did not happen to a ree with one of the parties of the country? iIsay nothing about. the character of this letter. Whether it is of an intemperate or temperate character does not make any difference. In the 1st place, I agree with the honorable Senfrom Ohio, who said that this was a private letter, not intended for publication by the writer, or not known that it was so intended. put into cir culation by an imprudent friend, if you please. Is he to suTTer for that? Are you to make your ministers abroad slaves? Are they to sit down at their desks, even in their private correspondence, with a seal, not upon their lips exactly, but upon the very action of their brains, to think as you think? I hope, sir, that the senate will not come to any such conclusion. I do trust they will not, for their own sake, apart from all else. Nothing, I think, could be so mischievous; nothing could give our Government such a character abroad as the news that Our minister at Portugal was refused his salary because he criticised the action, not of congress, not of the Government, but of a party in congress. What would Europe say? Vhat would the 'eers and scoffs and scorn of the monarchists or our Government if you give it to them to say all over Europe. “ What has republicanism come to? Where has it come to? Is not the tyranny, ” they would say, “of a faction1,000 times worse than the granny of a despot?” Is there a despot in urope who would dare to refuse pay to one of his public servants because that servant had written a letter of this kind 7 Nobody would think of it. Gentlemen who are so exceedingly tender and thin skinned about what is said in regard to them will listen patiently, I trust, while I read a telegram that is paraded this morning publicly in our newspapers, indited I am told by a high public functionary of this land; one in great favor with the dominant party; one who stands extremely high in the esteem of gentlemen who complain of this letter; one who fixes his aim not upon a party, but upon an individual, and that the individual whom above all others the American people have delighted to honor not that the mericnn people are bound to believe eve thing that he believes; not that they are boun to follow his opinions; but he represents, and especially does he represent to people abroad, the majesty of this great Republic. May Iaslr, what jo ', what chuckling, and bubbling up of profoun leas ure took place among these same gentlemen who are so thin skinned when they read this morning this telegram: Nssnvrmnr, July 19.1866. 1101:J. W. Forums, bet‘rcfan/ U.S.: Senate, Wallunaton: We have fought this battle and won it. We have ratified the constitutional amendmentin the House 43 votes for 11 against it. two of Andrcw Johnson’s tools not voting. Give my respectsto the deaddog of the White House. whG BROWNLOW And the writer of this elegant epistle is, or I believe professes to be, a man of God; a man whose mission it was here on earth to preach peace and good will to all men;a man who was to employ himself in stilling and calming the waves of passion as they aroused the people; 11. man. in other words, who professes himself a follower of n divine Master who proclaimed that love was the great element which entered and should enter into the composition of true religion upon earth this man writes this telegram to the SecySenate, the highest legislative and judicial tribunal of the landl He insults the majesty of the nation here in her very chosen forum. He insults us; he insults everybody by supposing that we would delight in that low, vile, hlthy stuff which even a fishwoman would discard. I venture to say there is not one on the wharves at Alexan dria that would, unless provoked, befoul her mouth with such language as that. Now, compare that with the temperate I say temperate here in this connection the temperate criticism of Mr. Harvey upon the course of the majority in Congress. I agree, if that was pointed at a single man, there would be more in it; but that criticism, when applied to a party, is as common as the daylight. But this is unique; this is rare. This is the 1st time in the histor of the Senate, unquestionably, that such a ropping as this has fallen from so foul a bird into this Chamber; and it is the 1st time, I think, in the history of this Chamber when members of this body would sit patiently by and not vindicate themselves from the charge of being accessories to such rituperation. And this is published with joyful acclaim by an officer 0 this body, published in the very sanctuary of American decency, because if it is not to be found here, where shall we find it? If we are not to be the exemplars of the nation, at least so far as the use of calumny, vituperation, and Billingsuate is concerned, what are we here for, an what must we expect from the nation that is to take its one from us? Gentlemen are afraid that our character will suffer abroad from Mr. Harvey’s criticism. What will they think when I tell them that a branch of Congress passed an appropriation to circulate this paper, and to circulate it expressly abroad, as a specimen of American journalism, as a specimen of the respect entertained by the coordinate branches of this Government for one another. I ask, what will monarchical Europe say to that dispatch? What will the aristocracy say to it? hope they will not read it. I trust, for the sake of our character for common decency, that they will not read it. But, sir, I say to the democrat of Europe, the man in favor of free institutions, the man in favor of a RFG, this will be the bitterest thing possible for him to read.