Mr. SAULSBURY. And appointed collectors who are residing in Virginia. In every form, in every sha o, in which Congress could recognize Alexan ria as being in the State of Virginia, it has done so from the year 1846 when it passed the act of retrocession. And yet, in the face of all the solemn acts of the Government of the U.S. in every dept, executive, legislative, and judicial, and that continuously for a period of 20 years, you are now asked to repeal the law and to say that Alexandria is no portion of the State of Virginia. Why, sir, if this was a controversy between individuals in a court of law or in a court of equity, upon the mere presentation of the facts to the court they would not hear argument on the subject. [boy would say you are estopped in law or you are estopped in pats, your own acts conclude you. Sir, you cannot blow hot and cold at the same time. You have made your election, and even if the original act was absolutely void, your subsequent acts rendered the retroccssion valid and complete. There is no lawyer that has ever studied an elementary book upon the principles of the law that can gainsay or deny the correctness of the opinion I have now passed. Mr. President, let not prejudice or assion warp our judgments as legislators. when the principle governing the case is as clear as the sun at noouday, do not let us fly in the face of reason and of law and say, simply because we have numbers sufficient to pass the act that therefore, right or wrong, legal or.illegal, we will pass it. There is not a member of the legal profession on this floor who, if this was a controversy between private individuals, and the plaintiff in the case was standing in the same attitude toward the defendant that the U.S. stands in reference to the State of Virginia, would take a fee to go into a courthouse to argue the case. And yet, sir, because it is Virginia, which is in ruins, and because the U.S. Government is a rest and powerful Government, and because there is a disapproval of the action of the public men of Virginia in attempting to secede from the federal Union, we are asked to pass this bill directly in the face of our own action for 20 years, directlyin contravention of the plainest and simplest principles of law, and directly and palpably in contravention of the plainest principles of justice. Seize upon that portion of what was formerly the DistCol, appropriate to yourselves the money of Virgmia that has been expended in the erection of railroads and other improvements in that district, and then lay your hands upon your hearts and say that this is all just and fair! But, Mr. President, I was struck with a remark that fell from the honorable Senfrom Ohio the other day. He went further, and contended, 'if I understood him aright, and I do not wish to misrepresent him, that even if the law of retrocession was constitutional, yet that the Congress of the U.S. had the power, and, as I understood him, could right full recal the act. h