Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I understand now that my friendfrom Illinois thinks that it is necessary to repeal the 13th section of the original act, only because, 1st, it authorizes the President to pardon by proclamation; and, 2nd, it authorizes him by proclamation to declare a general amnesty. Sir, the power conferred upon the President by the Constitution is as comprehensive as words can make it. He is authorized, or to use the very language of the Constitution, “he shall have power” “to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the U.S. ” How he is to exercise that power, the Consti.tution is silent. Whether he is to do it in each particular instance of a man who has committed an offense, or whether, where there is a class of offenders, he may do it in some form so as to include the entire class, the Constitution says nothing about. I should suppose that where the power is conferred upon him absolutely, in general terms, it is for him to decide as to the manner in which he will execute it, or as to the number of cases in which he will exercise it; as to the manner, whether he will execute it by granting to each one a pardon for the alleged offense, or as to those who may be included in it, whether he will grant a pardon to the whole collectively, and whether he will or will not grant it in the form of a proclamation, instead of the form which has usually been adopted. My recollection is I think I am not mistaken about it that after the suppression of what was termed the whisky insurrection in Pennsylvania, which became so threatening as to induce General Washington to head his troops and to march with an army collected from Maryland and Pennsylvania and elsewhere, he, I think without any legislative authority on the subject, granted by proclama.tion an amnesty to all who were concerned in it. I am not aware that he issued a pardon or an amnesty to any individual citizen involved in that insurrection; and I never heard that his mode of exerting the power was questioned. Now, as to the authority, under the power to comprehend all offenders who may have been involved in any violation of the laws of the U.S., the Senate will find by looking at the 74th number of the Federalist, written by Mr. Hamilton, that he assumes that the power is coextensive with the necessity, with the exigency; he assumes that where there are many, concerned in an insurrection they may be induced to arrest their progress, or after it has been arrested by other means, they may be pardoned in some general way. I will read a few sentences from that number. After quoting the constitutional provision, he says: “Humanity and good policy conspire to that the benign prerogative of pardoning shoduicldtate be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.” Then he goes on to examine the reason which to his mind shows that the power should some where exist in any well constituted Government. It was contended at that time that the power should be in Congress, and in the course of that number he meets that objection to the Constitution as it stood, and he does it by saying: “On the other hand, as men generally deriveconfidencefrom their number they might often encour age each other in an act of obduracy, and might be less sensible to the apprehension of censurefor an injudicious or affected clemency. Qn theseaccounts one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of Government than a body of men.” So far as to the question whether the power is to be vested in one man or in a body of men, or in other words, whether it should be given to the President or be given to Congress “The czpediency of vesting the power of pardoning in the President has, if I mistake not, beCnonly contested in relation to the crime of treason. This, it has been urged, ought to have depended upon the assentof one or both of the branches of the legislative body. I shall not deny that there are strong reasons to be assigned for requiring in this partigh lar the concurrence of that body, or of a part of it. As treason is a crime leveled at the immediatej of the society when the laws have once ascertain the guilt of the offender there seems a fitness in re; ferring the expediency of an act of mercy, toward him to the judgment of the Legislature. And this ought the rather to be the case as the supposition o the connivance of the Chief Magistrate ought not to be entirely excluded.” He goes on to examine that doctrine end comes to the conclusion that the power ought to be where the Convention had placed it: “On the other hand, when the sedition, had proceeded from causeswhich had inflamed the present;ments of the major party they might often be found obstimateand inexorable when policy demanded a conduct of forbearance and clemency. But the prin. cipal argument for reposing the power of pardouing in this case in the Chief Magistrate is this: in Seo sons of insurrection or ical momentswhen rebellion there are oftenerio. a well timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the Commonwealth.” As a means of suppressing the insurrection, while it was going on, Congress not in session an object not to be accomplished by the issuing of individual pardons; but it may be all. important as a means to an end, that end being the suppression of the rebellion, that there should at such moments, to use the language of the writer, be made an offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels