So stands the record of that State which is now held responsible for retiring, and is alleged to have withdrawn because she received now what, in former times, she had demanded as the full measure of her rights. Did she receive it? The argument could only be made by concealing the fact that her resolutions of 1848 and 1856 asserted the right to protection, and claimed it from the General Government. What, then, is the necessary inference? That, in the Cincinnati platform, they believed they obtained that which they asserted, or that which necessarily involved it. So much for the point of faith; so much for the point of consistency in the assertion of right. But if it were otherwise; if they had neglected to assert a right; would that destroy it? If they had failed at some time to claim this protection, are they to be estopped, in all time to come, from claiming it? Constitutional right is eternal--not to be sacrificed by any body of men. A single man may revive it at any period of the existence of the Constitution. So the argument would be worthless, if the facts were as stated. That they are not so stated, is shown by the record. Here allow me to say, in all sincerity, that I dislike thus to speak about conventions; it does not belong to the duties of the Senate; we did not assemble here to make a President, except in the single contingency of a failure by the people and by the House of Representatives to elect. When that contingency arrives, the question will be before us. I am sorry that it should have been prematurely introduced. But since the action of the recent convention at Charleston is presented as the basis of argument, it may be as well to refer to it, and see what it is. The majority report, presented by seventeen States of the Union, and those the States most reliable to give Democratic votes--the States counted so certain to give Democratic votes that they have been regarded as a fixed basis, a nucleus to which others were to be attracted--these seventeen States reported to the convention a series of resolutions, one of which asserted the right to protection. A minority of States reported another series, excluding the avowal of the right--not exactly denying it, but not avowing it--and a second minority report was submitted, being the Cincinnati platform, pure and simple. It is true that a majority of delegates adopted the minority report, but not a majority of States, nor does it appear, by an analysis of the votes, and the best evidence I have been able to obtain, that it was by a majority of delegates, if each had been left to his own choice; but that, by one of those ingenious arrangements--one of those incidents which, among jurists, is described as the favor the vigilant receives from the law--it so happened that, in certain States, the delegates were instructed to vote as a unit; in other States they were not; so that, wherever they were instructed to vote as a unit, the vote must so be cast,