Mr. ROSS said he had not undertaken to state any principle at all. His object was to refer the subject to a committee to decide upon. He had not said that he considered the original resolution to contain a correct principle; it was a point left for the committee to consider and for the House to determine on. But if it was a correct principle that those who suffered under the sedition law should be remunerated, he said he had no hesitation in saying that his constituents, who had suffered as materially and as much as any for the democratic interest in this country, should be placed on the same ground as those who were asking for the favor of the House for no better reason; and when the gentleman calls upon me, said Mr. R., to go the whole length of a principle which he states, it is calling upon me to do that which is consequent on a principle which I have not assumed. The gentleman from Kentucky conceives that there is a difference between the cases alluded to in my amendment and the cases arising under the sedition law. Where is the difference, sir? In both cases they were laws of the United States: in both cases the judges of the courts of the United States were authorized to proceed. In neither of the cases did they decide the law unconstitutional. If, then, persons were punished by the sedition law in its full operation, carried into effect by the constituted authorities, where, I ask, is the distinction between that and any other law? To all the purposes of legality, that law is as much legal as that under which the direct tax was instituted. Whether the law under which a direct tax was collected, was constitutional or not, has it not as equally received the disapprobation of the Republicans of the United States as the sedition law? If then it was the object of the democratic party to rid the country of such a law as much as of the sedition law, I ask whether those who suffered under each law have not equal claims? There can be no legal claim upon the House under either law; but we know that it was the hardy yeomanry who presented a firm phalanx to the irresistible torrent of injurious laws of the Federal Administration, and who gave the present party the ascendency, and many of them have not, as the gentleman from Kentucky has been, compensated for their suffering by a long continuance in an honorable and lucrative office which he enjoys by the confidence of his constituents. Mr. POTTER declared himself at a loss to know whether the House was sitting here as a branch of the Legislature to pass laws, or as a body to remunerate those concerned in the violation of them. The House sit here to make laws and not to encourage those who resisted them; but if they determined to give premiums for the violations of laws, they had better depart home at once.