Daily Union And American

THE UNSEATING OF SENATOR STOCKTON.

In order to defeat the President's policy and to carry the measures proposed by the Radicals in Congress, that body has instituted an investigation of the rights of the sitting members to their seats. Senator Stockton, of New Jersey, is presented in the secret cabal which seeks to rule or to ruin the country as a fit subject for the skill of these miserable tinkerers of the Constitution, these self-constituted oligarchs, who are desirous of wreaking vengeance upon the Southern people, and who were as mild as "sucking doves" during the war. Distrusting the people and denouncing the President, they are now alone manoeuvering to carry their infamous schemes through the Congress, relying upon something to turn up in the future to cause the people of the country to sustain them. The object was the same in the case of Voorhees and Brooks and Stockton, though different pretexts were put forward. In the last named, embodying as it does, an outrage upon both fact and law, we present the comments of the National Intelligencer, and upon it ask the deliberate judgment of our readers of all opinions. It reads in this wise: A Senator has been expelled for non-conformity to a party. Let the event stand as an epoch. We have frequently charged revolutionary designs upon the Radical party in Congress, and have cited again and again the palpable tendencies of measures disguised before the people as statutes, but contrived really for the overthrow of their liberties. We have deplored the demoralization which pervades the Capitol, and denounced the dishonor publicly incurred by citizens in high station, unconscious of their shame. But what is to be thought of a vote in the Senate of the United States, expelling a Senator from a sovereign State, without charges, under the grossly inadequate subterfuge that, as a pure question of law, he was not only elected, against the expressed judgment of every recognized jurist on the floor? The right of Senator Stockton, of New Jersey, to his seat involved no question of fact, but one solely of law, on which the learned Committee on the Judiciary, embracing some of the most eminent lawyers in the country, and led by its able chairman, Mr. Trumbull, had pronounced emphatically and impregnably in favor of the sitting Senator. An analysis of the vote in the Senate shows that, on a question of law, every distinguished lawyer in the Senate was in favor of the sitting Senator, who was, nevertheless, thrust out. But the detail and incidents of this shameful scene in a deliberative body of such high dignity, acting upon a case involving whatever of honorable scruple belongs to the Senatorial character, are such as could not be exposed without some mortification in a ward caucus of groveling intriguers. The only member of the Judiciary Committee who had opposed Mr. Stockton—Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire—had asked and received a postponement, in order to have opportunity to offer his flimsy contribution to the discussion. Now a postponement was asked by a distinguished and able Senator of his own party, Mr. Dixon—confined yet to his chamber—and by the colleague of the person whose rights were to be passed upon—absent on the faith of a Senator's pledge of honor, and now sick—and by half the Senators present; but Mr. Clark had the hardihood to oppose it. This clearly enough shows where the feeblest intellect on the committee had found motives for dissenting from its judgment of law. Not content with so much, the same Senator attempted to foist into the resolution before the Senate a virtual misrepresentation of fact, viz: that Mr. Stockton had received less votes than some of his competitors—for that would have been the plain sense of such an amendment as he first offered, standing on the journal. Mr. Morrill, who had, for partizan reasons, on Monday last, deliberately published his untrustworthiness among men of honor was yet competent for a bargain with Mr. Foster, whereby the latter succeeded in qualifying himself to thrust out a fellow-Senator by pretending to owe a pledge to one who had just repudiated his own. But when Messrs. Foster and Morrill "paired off" they doubtless understood each other. Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, whose opinion in favor of Mr. Stockton seemed made up on Monday, doubtless contrasted it with "Mr. Sumner's recent congratulations, and decided, in fear of a retraction of the latter, to dodge the vote. Appeals were made to Senators as statesmen, as brethren, and as gentlemen; but they refused to postpone. The power that is "always at war with its boundaries," overruled all considerations but one, viz: that it would be relatively two votes stronger if Mr. Stockton were out. The aged and venerable defender of the Constitution, Mr. Foote—all will believe—could have but one opinion on such a case as Mr. Stockton's. He is soon to be more. Shall it be confessed to the world that a Senator of reputation in both hemispheres arose in the midst of this discussion to misrepresent the views of the oldest member of the body, known at the time to be dying? What can be sacred if the chamber of death evokes no respect—if the breath of a dying statesman can be caught like the gossip of an eavesdropper, and, while death is clutching his heartstrings, a voice be falsely put into his mouth to entrap those who revere him Who is the Senator for whom the death-bed of age and greatness can hallow nothing? It is the elegant and ornate Sumner! This deliverer of ideal bondsmen, this weeper over poetical catastrophes, this expounder of political aesthetics, insults the dying to defraud the living. He declared that the venerable father of the Senate had asserted himself opposed to the admission of Mr. Stockton. It could not have been credited standing alone. But another Senator positively contradicted it on the faith of Mr. Foote's personal declaration. Whither do we tend?