I would not seem pertinacious, though I do not know that I can err by any pertinacity on a question of Human Liberty. I feel that we are painfully admonished, by incidents occurring under our very eyes, that we ought to do something to tighten that great Constitutional Amendment. It contains in its text words which I regret. I regretted them at the time; I proposed to strike them out; and now they return to plague the inventor. There should have been no recognition in the Constitutional Amendment of any possibility of Slavery. The reply is, that the Amendment, if properly interpreted, does not recognize the possibility of Slavery being legal in any just sense. But it is misinterpreted,--has been so in an adjoining State; and who can tell that it will not be so now in every one of the Southern States? I am sorry that the Committee has not reported the bill. The Senate last night passed a bill, on the report of my colleague, to prohibit slavery and peonage in New Mexico. Under the Constitutional Amendment, I take it, that bill was unnecessary, it was superfluous. But we have found a difficulty in that Territory. There has been outrage; slavery in some form exists there; and consequently my colleague was right, when he brought his Committee to the conclusion that they must meet it by specific enactment. Where the abuse appears, we must root it out. That is Radicalism. So long as a human being is held as a slave anywhere under this flag, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, there is occasion for your powerful intervention; and if there is ambiguity or failure in existing statutes, then you must supply another statute. PROTECTION AGAINST THE PRESIDENT. SPEECHES IN THE SENATE, ON AN AMENDMENT TO THE TENURE OF OFFICE BILL, JANUARY 15, 17, AND 18, 1867. This session of Congress was occupied by efforts to restrain and limit the appointing power of the President. The differences between the President and Congress increased daily. Among measures considered by Congress was a bill to regulate the tenure of offices, known as the Tenure of Office Bill. January 15th, Mr. Sumner moved to amend this bill by adding a new section:-- “_And be it further enacted_, That all officers or agents, except clerks of Departments, now appointed by the President or by the head of any Department, whose salary or compensation, derived from fees or otherwise, exceeds one thousand dollars annually, shall be nominated by the President and appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; and the term of all such officers or agents who have been appointed since the first day of July, 1866, either by the President or by the head of a Department, without the advice and consent of the Senate, shall expire on the last day of February, 1867.”