MR. SUMNER. I shall come to that. The point is, that the Senator treats the Declaration of Independence as no better than the writings of Washington, of Jefferson, of Madison, “The Federalist,” and everything that pertains to that day. It is only part and parcel of contemporary history,--of no special consequence, no binding character, not supreme, but only one of the authorities, or at least one of the witnesses, by which we are to read the Constitution. Sir, is it so regarded by Congress,--or at least is it so regarded by the committee of this body under whose direction is printed what is known familiarly as “The Constitution, Rules, and Manual”? Here is the little volume, to which we daily turn. I find that the first document is the National Declaration, preceding the National Constitution. Sir, it precedes the Constitution in time, as it is more elevated in character. The Constitution is a machine, great, mighty, beneficent. The Declaration supplies the principles giving character and object to the machine. The Constitution is an earthly body, if you please; the Declaration is the soul. The powers under the Constitution are no more than the hand to the body; the Declaration is the very soul itself. But the Senator does not see it so. He sees it as no better than a letter of Jefferson or Madison, or as some other contemporary incident which may help us in finding the meaning of the Constitution. The Senator will not find many ready to place themselves in the isolation he adopts. It was not so regarded by the historian who has described it with more power and brilliancy than any other,--Mr. Bancroft. After setting forth what it contains, he presents it as a new and lofty Bill of Rights:-- “This immortal state-paper, which for its composer was the aurora of enduring fame, was ‘the genuine effusion of the soul of the country at that time,’ the revelation of its mind, when, in its youth, its enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest creative powers of which man is capable. _The bill of rights which it promulgates_ is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the State.”[240] The vivid presentment of this state-paper, in its commanding character, like an ordinance for mankind, above all other contemporary things, shows its association with our great national anniversary. “The nation, when it made the choice of a day for its great anniversary, selected not the day of the resolution of independence, when it closed the past, but that of the declaration of the principles on which it opened its new career.”[241]