Now, I am wholly dissatisfied with this course of proceeding, and I cannot submit to it in regard to the Petitions, which I am charged to present. I hold that the question of reception, as it is in fact and of necessity the first in order of time, so is it the first in order of principle. It must not be pushed aside to make place for the discussion of speculative resolutions, or for debate, on the merits of the question raised by the prayer of these petitions. I maintain that the House is bound by the Constitution to receive the petitions; after which, it will take such method of deciding upon them as reason and principle shall dictate. It should first lend an attentive and respectful ear to the prayer of the People. Whether it can or will grant that prayer, is an after consideration. I have already kept back for several weeks the petitions committed to me, in order to shape my course according to the deliberate decision of the House; but that decision does not come; it is continually procrastinated for the sake of considering questions, which, in my view, are secondary in time and in principle to the question of reception; and I can no longer consent that these my constituents shall be held waiting, as it were, at the doors of the Capitol for admission, when, as I read the Constitution, they have a right to demand immediate entrance, and to be respectfully received by their assembled representatives. I tender to the House, therefore, an alternative. I place this Petition at their disposal. If they choose to fix absolutely on a time certain for considering and deciding the question of reception, so that this shall take precedence of the other debate, they will then have this day, as usual, for its appropriate business of the general presentation of petitions. But if they decide, as heretofore, to lay the question of reception on the table, then I shall feel myself constrained to take the floor upon another of these Petitions, and to keep it, as under the late decision of the House I have a right to do, until I have fully debated the whole subject-matter. If the effect of this shall be to exclude all other petitions for the day, I cannot help it. Be the responsibility on their heads who raise this novel and extraordinary question of reception, going to the unconstitutional abridgment, as I conceive, of the great right of petition inherent in the People of the United States. [The question, Shall this petition be received? was then, at the motion of a gentleman from South Carolina, (Mr. HAMMOND) laid on the table; when Mr. CUSHING resumed the floor and said:]