of right feeling which often outruns sagacity, carried you at once to a result to which others were more slowly brought, but to which nearly all have at length been brought, by reason, reflection, and argument.  Your movement led the way; it became an example, and has had a powerful effect on both sides of the Atlantic.  Imprisonment for debt, or even arrest and holding to bail for mere debt, no longer exists in England; and former laws on the subject have been greatly modified and mitigated, as we all know, in our States.  “Abolition of imprisonment for debt,” your own words in the title of your own bill, has become the title of an act of Parliament.

Sir, I am glad of an occasion to pay you the tribute of my sincere respect for these your labors in the cause of humanity and enlightened policy.  For these labors thousands of grateful hearts have thanked you; and other thousands of hearts, not yet full of joy for the accomplishment of their hopes, full, rather, at the present moment, of deep and distressing anxiety, have yet the pleasure to know that your advice, your counsel, and your influence will all be given in favor of what is intended for their relief in the bill before us.

Mr. President, let us atone for the omissions of the past by a prompt and efficient discharge of present duty.  The demand for this measure is not partial or local.  It comes to us, earnest and loud, from all classes and all quarters.  The time is come when we must answer it to our own consciences, if we suffer longer delay or postponement.  High hopes, high duties, and high responsibilities concentrate themselves on this measure and this moment.  With a power to pass a bankrupt law, which no other legislature in the country possesses, with a power of giving relief to many, doing injustice to none, I again ask every man who hears me, if he can content himself without an honest attempt to exercise that power.  We may think it would be better to leave the power with the States; but it was not left with the States; they have it not, and we cannot give it to them.  It is in our hands, to be exercised by us, or to be for ever useless and lifeless.  Under these circumstances, does not every man’s heart tell him that he has a duty to discharge?  If the final vote shall be given this day, and if that vote shall leave thousands of our fellow-citizens and their families, in hopeless and helpless distress, to everlasting subjection to irredeemable debt, can we go to our beds with satisfied consciences?  Can we lay our heads upon our pillows, and, without self-reproach, supplicate the Almighty Mercy to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors?  Sir, let us meet the unanimous wishes of the country, and proclaim relief to the unfortunate throughout the land.  What should hinder?  What should stay our hands from this good work?  Creditors do not oppose it,—­they apply for it; debtors solicit it, with an importunity, earnestness, and anxiety not to be described; the Constitution enjoins it; and