Perhaps I need not say more, and yet there has been so much criticism upon me to-night that I proceed a little further. Here was my friend at my right, [Mr. NYE,] who, having shot his shaft, has left. I wish that he had praised me less and been more candid. His praise was generous, but his candor certainly less marked than his praise. I might take up every point of his speech and show you the wrong that he did me. He is not in his seat. I wish he were. [_Mr. Nye entered the Chamber from one of the cloak-rooms._] Oh, there he comes. He said that I was against inquiry. No such thing. I am for inquiry. I wish all the documents now on the files of the State Department and of the Navy Department spread before Congress and before the country. To this end I have introduced a resolution which is now on your table; I wish this information before any other step is taken in this business. Instead of being against inquiry, I am for it, and in that way which will be most effective. But the resolution which I introduced, asking for the most important testimony, all documentary in character, is left on the table, while a different proposition, legislative in character and in no respect a resolution of inquiry, but an act creating three new officers under the Constitution, is pressed on the Senate, and, as I demonstrated to-day, for the obvious purpose of associating Congress with this scheme of annexion. The whole question of annexion was opened, and I felt it my duty to show at what cost to the good name of this Republic the scheme has been pursued down to this day. I entered upon this exposure with a reluctance which I cannot express; but it was with me a duty. My friend at my right [Mr. NYE] says--I took down his words, I think--that I saw nothing in the President’s Message except what he said about San Domingo. I was speaking of San Domingo, and not of the other topics; nor was I speaking of the President. There again my friend did me injustice. I was speaking of annexion; and it is my habit, I think you will do me the justice to say, Mr. President, to speak directly to the questions on which I undertake to address the Senate. At any rate, I try to confine myself to the point; and the point to-day was annexion, and nothing else. I was not called to go to the right or to the left, to enter upon all the various topics of the Message, whether for praise or censure. The Message was not under discussion, except in one single point. Nor was I considering the merits of the Administration, or the merits, whether civil or military, of the President, but the annexion of San Domingo, on which I felt it my duty to express myself with the freedom which belongs to a Senator of the United States.