Mr. ROGERS. I do it in 2 ways. One is that any law upon the statute book, or any amendment to i. Constitution, commands the obedience and respect of every law abiding man in the land until it is repealed or set aside by some competent authority. The other and main reason is, that the rebellion was founded upon the institution of slavery, being inaugu rated to preserve that institution; it was submitted to the arbitrament of arms, the highest arbitrament known to civilized nations, and the decision was against it. I am not for reviving anything that was destroyed by the results of the war, and there is no authority to revive an institution that was submitted to such an ordeal. It is an institution that never should have existed. It is now a dead issue, and the question is not how to free the blacks from slavery but how to free the southern whites, who are held in a worse slavery.than were the negroes before the war. But the war did not destroy the States or their rights and institutions. The war does not authorize the representatives of the nation to break down the Constitution and trample it under their feet; to prostrate the old Union and destroy the liberties of the country. The war only authorized us to carry out the fundamental principles of the Constitution. And when we go against that we are morally as guilty of treason as were any who engaged in the late rebellion. It makes no difference to me what the opinions of others may be, for I am entitled to my own opinions, and although I am in the minority I will stand by the POTUS I stand by him from one end of his plan of reconstruction to the other. And I believe he will go down to oosterity honored and loved for his pure patriotism and self devotion to the Constitution of his country. [Laughter] And although he may be scoffed at, rid iculed, abused, and trampled upon by traitors and disunionists to the Constitution of their country, his countrymen will cause it to be written in letters of gold upon the altars of constitutional liberty, charity, and Christianity, that he stood as a barrier against the tide of despotism, vengeance, barbarism, and tyranny which but for him would have shaken down the Constitution and laws of his country and im. a monarchy upon their ruins. [Great aughter] I know you laugh and scoff over the down fall of liberties made venerable by the care of a century. I know you exalt over the success ive blows struck at public liberty and public law. I know that no sense of the future of this country will arrest the reckless clouds of despotism and tyranny that now hover over you in your hour of frantic revelry. Still you will find one here, as long as I am here, and that will be for a short period, [laughter, l who will protest against your wicked machi nations to destroy our country. You may laugh, but I have a right as a Representative of the people to express my sentiments, and I am going to express them. And the only way you can prevent me, as long as your Speaker allows me my rights as one of the members of the committee, will be for you to do as you have done with several other honorable gentlemen, expel me from the floor of the House. I have always been respected by this House, because I have openly and boldly, but respect fully stated my principles, the honest convictions of my heart. I know, sir, that I am human; I know that God has not given me power to foresee the momentous events of the future. But my heart is wedded to the Constitution, and I desire when I die to transmit that rich inheritance as a legacy unimpaired to my descendants to the remotest generation. I wish to preserve our Constitution and Union as the brightest casket of civil liberty that was ever witnessed on the eastern or the western continent. I wish to preserve our noble fabric of Government from the effects of the destructive measures urged by the degenerate sons of noble sires, who fought and bled for the very liberties which I am now defending amid the scoffs and jeers of these Radicals. [Derisive laughter]