The Clerk read The House, agreeably to order, resumed the consideration of the following JtResolution declaratory of the meaning of the 13th amendment to the Constitution of the U.S.A.: Whereas the Congress of the U.S. at the 2nd session of the 38 h Congress, proposed to the several States for adoption the 13th amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. which has now, by the ratification of 3/4ths of the States of the Union, become part of the Constitution, and which by its terms forever prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have duly convicted:” and whereas in some parts of this Union it is asserted and maintained that, not withstanding said amendment, it is lawful to sell or otherwise commit into unofficialsubjection to slavery personswho may beconvicted of offensesagainst the aw, by reason whereof certain inferior tribunals have adjudged free citizens of the U.S. to be so disposed of as to refistablishchattel slavery for life or for years, against the principles of the Chris tian religion, of civilization, and of the Constitution of the U.S., which now recognizes no involuntary servitude, except to the law and to the officers of its administration: Now therefore, Be it resolved, &c., That the true intent and meaning of said amendment prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude forever in all forms, except in direct execution of a sentence imposing a definite penalty according to law, which penalty cannot, without violation of the Constitution, impose any other servitude than that of imprisonment or other restraint of freedom under the immediate control of officers of law and according the to the usual course thereof, to the exclusion of all unofficial control of the person so held in servitude: and that all orders, judgments or decreesauthorizing or directing the sale or other disposition into servitude of any personwithin the juris diction of the U.S. otherwise than as above declared to be lawful, are and shall be taken and held to be in violation of the 13th constitutional amendment aforesaid, and therefore void.