I am not to be betrayed into the constitutional argument. I am now on the question of order. I say that this bill is essential to perfect the original Reconstruction measures. You should not return to your homes without this additional Act by which Reconstruction is finished. If any Senator has any reason to bring against this bill, if any one can suggest a doubt of its constitutionality, I should like to hear the reason or the doubt, and I shall be ready to answer it. I invite discussion. I challenge the expression of any reason against it, or of any doubt with regard to its constitutionality; and I ask Senators to look at it as a great measure of expediency as well as of justice. How will you settle this question in the Loyal States? Here are Delaware, Maryland,--my friend over the way will not be sensitive when I allude to his State,--and Kentucky, in each of which this measure will be the salvation of Union citizens. In other States, like Pennsylvania, it will rally at once--I am speaking now on the question of expediency--twenty thousand votes to the Union cause. In Indiana, too, it will settle the Suffrage question. I say nothing of Iowa. There is Wisconsin. MR. TRUMBULL. They all vote there now. MR. SUMNER. Under the decision of the Supreme Court. So much the better. There is Connecticut. It would obtain three thousand votes there for the good cause. A short Act of Congress will determine the political fortunes of Connecticut for an indefinite period by securing three thousand additional votes to the right side. There is New York, also, where the bill would have the same excellent beneficent influence. Who, then, can hesitate? Look at it in any light you please. Regard it as the completion of these Reconstruction measures, as a constitutional enactment, or as a measure of expediency to secure results we all desire at the approaching elections, and who can hesitate? There has been no bill before you for a long time of more practical value than this. I hope there will be no question about proceeding with it, and that we may pass it before we separate to-night. MR. EDMUNDS. I agree with my friend from Massachusetts, that the bill has very great merit. It has supreme moral merit. I agree to every word of it. I am a little afraid, it is true, that there is a higher law that will bind us not to pass it, for want of power. MR. SUMNER. Want of power! Will the Senator be good enough to state the reason? MR. EDMUNDS. No, not on this point, because it is not relevant to this question of order. MR. SUMNER. But, as the Senator is going into the question of the want of power, I really wish he would deign to enlighten us upon that. MR. EDMUNDS. My friend will have to go without it, so far as I am concerned, for I shall not make it. MR. SUMNER. Then I shall begin to think the Senator cannot.