a pretense for it, and that it never should have been suggested; what can a gentleman do more than what he has done-to write to the other attorney; take out a summons, to strike off the plea, and pay the expenses attending it, and to desire me to express his regret that it ever was pleaded? Gentlemen, although I am the defendant's advocate, I can see two sides to this question. As far as the plaintiff is concerned, she was not injured by it, if she is the person I believe her to be, and which I now state on the part of the defendant he believed her to be; stating such a charge as that and persevering in it might, no doubt, wound and distress some women, but, gentlemen, do forgive me for observing, we are not trying that. The question here to-day is whether the defendant broke his word, and if he broke it, what ought he to pay for having broken it. If he pleaded a plea for which there was no foundation, and put the plaintiff for some weeks to anxiety and inconvenience, still that is a matter now removed from your consideration. We have done all we possibly can do, we have withdrawn the plea, apologized for the plea, and have said there was no foundation for the plea, and that we were extremely sorry that ever the plea had found its way into the record. What further can a man do beyond saying he has made a mistake? As far as human language can go to rectify it, I express to you the most sincere regret that the mistake should have occurred. Any man may be subject to false information, and may make statements which he meant to prove. If he find he cannot prove them he ought to say so, and apologize, and make every reparation to the person whom he has unwittingly injured. Do not, when you come by and by to see what is the real issue in the case, and the real loss which the plaintiff has sustained, punish the defendant for a mistake which arose before the cause of action in this case of which she now complains, and for which the defendant has abundantly apologized. That seems to me nearly to exhaust the whole of the observations I have to make. You have got the case before you, and you have seen what the contract really was, the circumstances under which it was made, and how it was broken off. The question is, What are the real damages that the plaintiff has sustained in this case? Has she lost a marriage? It certainly can scarcely be called a marriage, to marry a man who could but be a husband in one sense. My friend does not suggest that there was anything like a shock or distress to her feelings on that account. He does not pretend

that there was anything like affection, esteem, or love to the de fendant, or that the plaintiff's heart was wounded, in respect of which she is entitled to compensation. It is said that this is a monetary action for a money loss, as she might have had a settlement upon her; for monetary loss she is entitled to ask the jury for compensation. Putting aside the accusation which has been atoned for, it is quite true this is a monetary action, but an action in which, most justly and rightly, the character of the parties is always taken into account; and there is no general rule by which damages in a matter of this kind can be estimated. There was a case before my lord the other day when we were refreshed by hearing some of the tones of that great eloquence which used to ring high and clear not so very long ago from these same benches. In that case a girl had given herself up for life to be the affianced wife of a gentleman who had thrown her aside and discarded her, without reason and without redress. There the jury meted out damages with no niggard hand. But this is not that case: the plaintiff in this case is not that sort of plaintiff; you cannot give her special damages in this case, without, to some extent, approving of the conduct she pursued, and encouraging women in a like situation to follow in her steps; and, apart from idle declamation, and according to plain common sense, if you agree with me in the view of her conduct which I have endeavored to put before you, it will follow that you will agree with me when I say that she has forgotten the dignity of her sex, and by her conduct lowered our ideas of that which we most esteem, reverence, and admire in the character of woman. I sincerely trust that you twelve English gentlemen will pause before you do anything that will give the faintest shadow of countenance to conduct such as the plaintiff has pursued; and that, if you think a promise was made, and a promise broken, and that it must be followed by some damages, you will say they ought to be most trivial if not nominal in amount.

SCHUYLER COLFAX

(1823-1885)

CHUYLER COLFAX represented an Indiana district in Congress continuously from December 3d, 1855, to March 23d, 1869. During the last six years of this time, he was Speaker of the House. As editor and proprietor of the South Bend, Indiana, Register, he was one of the organizers of the Republican party, and from its first contests to the close of his public career, he was always in great demand as a campaign orator. He was elected Vice-President on the ticket with General Grant in 1868, and served until March 3d, 1873, when he retired to South Bend, and thereafter appeared in public only as a lecturer. He was born in New York city, March 23d,

1823. Going with his parents to Indiana in 1836, and receiving a common-school education, he began to take an active part in politics as soon as he was old enough to vote. He died of heart disease at Mankato, Minnesota, January 13th, 1885.

THE CONFISCATION OF REBEL PROPERTY

(From a Speech Delivered in the House of Representatives, April 23d, 1862)

THE

HE bill that was laid on the table a short time ago would have left the matter in a very indefinite state, as I thought, in scanning its provisions after our adjournment last night. I was in favor of the first section of the bill, which declares that any man who shall hereafter willfully persist in the unholy rebellion against this Government shall be stripped of his property, of his stocks, of his money, and effects. But the second section provides that these proceedings shall be in the United States court, and that that court is to order this property to be sold. And when I recollected the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States made at one time in reference to "property," a decision which helped to inflame the South into demands for "rights" never before recognized, I felt it might possibly decide that the slaves of these rebels were "property," and that then we should be held up before the country and before the world

as authorizing the slaves of rebels to be sold, and their proceeds to be paid into the Treasury. I do not myself, as the House knows, regard slaves as property. They are persons "held to labor," to use the language of the Constitution. But I have grave doubts as to what the Supreme Court would decide, and the bill just laid on the table having been under the previous question, and therefore not amendable, I prefer that we shall ourselves settle this important point indisputably by the details of whatever bill we may pass, and not leave it as a vague question of construction to the courts.

The engineers of this rebellion-the Catilines who sat here in the council chambers of the Republic, and who, with the oath on their lips and in their hearts to support the Constitution of the United States, plotted treason at night, as has been shown by papers recovered at Florida, particularly the letter of Mr. Yulee, describing the proceedings of the midnight conclaves of these men to their confederates in the Southern States- should be punished by the severest penalties of the law, for they have added to their treason perjury, and are doubly condemned before God and man. Never, in any land, have there been men more guilty and more deserving of the extremest terrors of the law. The murderer takes but a single life, and we call him infamous. But these men wickedly and willfully plunged a peaceful country into the horrors of civil war, and inaugurated a régime of assassination and outrage against the Union men in their midst, hanging, plundering, and imprisoning, in a manner that throws into the shade the atrocities of the French Revolution. tent with this, they aimed their blows at the life of the Republic itself; and on many a battlefield, in a carnival of blood, they sought not only to destroy the Union itself, but to murder its defenders. Plunging into even still darker crimes, they have bayoneted the wounded on the field of carnage, buried the dead that fell into their hands with every possible ignominy, and then, to gloat their revenge, dug up their lifeless remains from the tomb, where even savages would have allowed them to rest, and converted their skulls into drinking cups-a barbarism that would have disgraced the Visigoths of Alaric the barbarian, in the dark ages of the past. The blood of our soldiers cries out from the ground against them. Has not forbearance ceased longer to be a virtue? We were told a year ago that leniency would probably induce them to return to their allegiance, and to

Not con

cease this unnatural war; and what has been the result? Let the bloody battlefields of this conflict answer.

When I return home I shall miss many a familiar face that has looked in past years with the beaming eye of friendship upon me. I shall see those who have come home with constitutions broken down by exposure and wounds and disease to linger and to die. I shall see women whom I have met Sabbath after Sabbath leaning on beloved husbands' arms, as they went to the peaceful sanctuary, clothed now in widows' weeds. I shall see orphans destitute, with no one to train their infant steps into paths of usefulness. I shall see the swelling hillock in the graveyard — where, after life's fitful fever, we shall all be gathered – betokening that there, prematurely cut off by a rifle ball aimed at the life of the Republic, a patriot soldier sleeps. I shall see desolate hearthstones and anguish and woe on every side. Those of us here who come from Indiana and Illinois know too painfully the sad scenes that will confront us amid the circles of our constituents.

Nor need we ask the cause of all this suffering, the necessity for all these sacrifices. They have been entailed on us as part of the fearful cost of saving our country from destruction. But what a mountain of guilt must rest upon those who, by their efforts to destroy the Government and the Union, have rendered these terrible sacrifices necessary.

Standing here between the living and the dead, we cannot avoid the grave and fearful responsibility devolving on us. The people will ask us when we return to their midst: When our brave soldiers went forth to the battlefield to suffer, to bleed, and to die for their country, what did you civilians in the Halls of Congress do to cripple the power of the Rebels whom they confronted at the cannon's mouth? What legislation did you enact to punish those who are responsible, by their perjury and treason, for this suffering, desolation, and death? Did you levy heavy taxes upon us and our property to pay the expenses of a war into which we were unwillingly forced, and allow the men who are the guilty and reckless authors of it to go comparatively free? Did you leave the slaves of these Rebels to plant and sow and reap, to till their farms, and thus support their masters and the armies of treason, while they, thus strengthened, met us in the field? Did you require the patriots of the loyal States to give up business, property, home, health, life, and all for the