MR. PRESIDENT,--I begin by expressing my acknowledgments to the Senator from Maine, who yields the floor to-day, and also my sincere regret that anything should interfere with the opening of this debate by him. It is his right, and I enter upon it now only by his indulgence. I am not insensible to the responsibility assumed in setting myself against a proposition already adopted in the other House, and having the recommendation of a Committee to which the country looks with such just expectation, and to which, let me say, I look with so much trust. But, after careful reflection, I do not feel that I can do otherwise. Knowing, as I do, the eminent character of the Committee, its intelligence, its patriotism, and the moral instincts by which it is moved, I am at a loss to understand the origin of an attempt which seems to me nothing else than another compromise of Human Rights, as if the country had not already paid enough in costly treasure and more costly blood for such compromises in the past. I had hoped the day of compromise with wrong had gone forever. Ample experience shows that it is the least practical mode of settling questions involving moral principle. A moral principle cannot be compromised. Here are important words of the Amendment:-- “_Provided_, That, whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons therein of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation.”