I cannot put out of the discussion, although I will not insist upon, the objection to the authority of the reports of the speeches alluded to, especially when it turns upon a question of extreme accuracy in the use of certain precise words and phrases, any departure from which would materially affect the sense of the speaker. We see daily in the reports of congressional debates, the most important mistakes or misrepresentations, unintentionally made, not of expressions merely, but of the very substance and meaning of the speakers; sometimes reporting the very reverse of what they actually said. I have occasion to know the carelessness with which these reports are frequently made, and, indeed, the impossibility of making them with accuracy. What a man _writes_ he must abide by, in its fair and legitimate meaning; but what another writes for him, however honest in the intention, cannot be so strictly imputed to him. There is also an objection to _extracts_, even truly recited, inasmuch as they are often qualified or modified by other parts of the writing or speech. As I have not, immediately at hand, the debates of the New York Convention, I am unable, just now, to see how far this may have been the case in the speeches from which the quotations are made. I must, therefore, at present, be content to take them as they are given in the Enquirer, and even then it appears to me that they are far from covering the Virginia doctrine of instructions. Let us see. Mr. King is represented to have said, that “the Senators will have a _powerful check_ in those _who wish for their seats_.” This is most true—and in fact it is to this struggle for place that we owe much of the zeal for doctrines calculated to create vacancies. Mr. King proceeds—“And the State Legislatures, if they find their delegates erring, can and will _instruct them_. Will this be no check?” The two checks proposed, in the same sentence and put upon the same footing, are the vigilance of those who want the places of the Senators, and the instructions which the State Legislatures can and will give to them. They are said to be, as they truly are, _powerful checks_, operating with a strong influence on the will and discretion of the Senator, but not as subjecting him, _as a matter of duty_, either to the reproaches of his rivals or the opinions of the Legislature. To do this, a check must be something more than powerful; it must be irresistible, or, at least, attended by some means of carrying it out to submission—some penalty or remedy for disobedience. I consider the term _instruct_, as here used, to mean no more than counsel, advise, recommend—because Mr. King does not intimate that any right or power is vested in the Legislature to compel obedience to their instructions, or to punish a refractory Senator as an official delinquent. It is left to his option to obey or not, which is altogether inconsistent with every idea of a _right to command_.