Mr. KERR. Mr. Speaker, it is surely safe to assume that our country has known no hour, since the organization and establishment of our matchless form of Government, when its circumstances demanded in its Representatives a higher order of statesmanship, or a more unseliish devotion to those great principles of our system which stand like beaconlights against dangerous boundaries, inviting the embarrassed mariner to safer aths. Desirin to keep these lights in view, an confessing wi sincere earn estness my lack of both ability and experience, I beg leave to submit a few reflections upon some of the solemn questions that demand appropriate action at our hands and I shall endeavor to do this in a spirit unshaded by the imiulses of partisan feelings. lhe true relations of the several States to the Union have always presented problemsof great 1interest and considerable difficulty for determi nation by one or another of the Depts of the Government. But now for the 1st time we are compelled to confront questions resulting from the temporary suspension of the constitutional relations between the U.S and some of the States. This suspension was the result of a State of war between the legitimate Government and the States that attempted to secede therefrom. It is conceded by most men, and is declared by the highest judicial tribunal in the Union, that during that state of war the respective parties to it sustained to each other the relations of belligerents. At the threshold, therefore, it becomes material to in guire what is meant by a state of belligerency. 11its primary signification, it meansa state of war. it implies an issue, asserted on the one side and denied on the other, and submitted for decision to the solemn arbitrament of arms. The recognition of the existence of war, the tacit or express admission of belligerent rights by the legitimate Government, concedes nothing inconsistent with its claim of sovereignty over the revolted people and Territory. It oes not even concede the existence of a Governmentde acto. But if it did, it would not at all impair the force of my argument, because the very term dofacto implies a spurious Government, without rightful existence, as contra distinguished from a Government do jun, of right it, or having riwhtful existence.