In the same general line of discussion which I adopted yesterday, I will refer you to a striking passage from a distinguished gentleman, and, when I have read the extract, will state from whom it emanated: "Any people anywhere, being _inclined_ and having the _power_, have a _right_ to rise up and _shake off the existing Government_, and _form a new one that suits them better_. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right--a right which, we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which _the whole people_ of an existing Government may choose to exercise it. _Any portion of such people_ that _can_, MAY REVOLUTIONIZE and make their _own_ of _so much of the territory as they inhabit_. More than this: a _majority_ of any portion of such people may revolutionize--putting down a _minority_ intermingled with or near about them who may oppose their movements. IT IS A QUALITY OF REVOLUTIONS NOT TO GO BY OLD LINES OR OLD LAWS, BUT TO BREAK UP BOTH AND MAKE NEW ONES."--Appendix Con. Globe, 1st Session 35th Congress, p. 94. Would you suppose, gentlemen, that it was an ardent South Carolina secessionist who declared that any people may revolutionize and hold mastery of any territory which they occupy? Would you suppose that was from Jefferson Davis, in the Senate of the United States? No, gentlemen; it is from Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, when he was a member of Congress, and was delivered on the 12th of January, 1848. Now, gentlemen, I do not think that an intelligent gentleman born in South Carolina, Kentucky, or Virginia, and educated by his parents in a certain political faith, has not as much right to adhere to it as he has to the religious faith in which he is brought up; and if he should happen to say all that is substantially claimed by these seceding States, he would be sustained by authority quoted here, and have the express sanction of the distinguished and excellent gentleman now at the head of this nation. Let me now cite to you _Wheaton's International Law, page_ 30, in which he says, that "_sovereignty_ is acquired by a State, _either_ at the _origin_ of the civil society of which it is composed, _or_ when it _separates itself_ from the community of which it previously formed a part, and on which it was dependent." Then he says, that "CIVIL WAR _between the members of the same society is, by the general usages of nations, such a war as entitles both the contending parties to all the rights of war as against each other, and as against neutral nations._"