Hardly have these halcyon notes ceased upon our ears, when, in resumed public session, we are summoned to fresh warlike operations; to create a new army of thirty thousand men for the further prosecution of the war; to carry the war, in the language of the President, still more dreadfully into the vital parts of the enemy, and to press home, by fire and sword, the claims we make, and the grounds which we insist upon, against our fallen, prostrate, I had almost said, our ignoble enemy.  If we may judge from the opening speech of the honorable Senator from Michigan, and from other speeches that have been made upon this floor, there has been no time, from the commencement of the war, when it has been more urgently pressed upon us, not only to maintain, but to increase, our military means; not only to continue the war, but to press it still more vigorously than at present.

Pray, what does all this mean?  Is it, I ask, confessed, then,—­is it confessed that we are no nearer a peace than we were when we snatched up this bit of paper called, or miscalled, a treaty, and ratified it?  Have we yet to fight it out to the utmost, as if nothing pacific had intervened?

I wish, Sir, to treat the proceedings of this and of every department of the government with the utmost respect.  The Constitution of this government, and the exercise of its just powers in the administration of the laws under it, have been the cherished object of all my unimportant life.  But, if the subject were not one too deeply interesting, I should say our proceedings here may well enough cause a smile.  In the ordinary transaction of the foreign relations of this and of all other governments, the course has been to negotiate first, and to ratify afterwards.  This seems to be the natural order of conducting intercourse between foreign states.  We have chosen to reverse this order.  We ratify first, and negotiate afterwards.  We set up a treaty, such as we find it and choose to make it, and then send two ministers plenipotentiary to negotiate thereupon in the capital of the enemy.  One would think, Sir, the ordinary course of proceeding much the juster; that to negotiate, to hold intercourse, and come to some arrangement, by authorized agents, and then to submit that arrangement to the sovereign authority to which these agents are responsible, would be always the most desirable method of proceeding.  It strikes me that the course we have adopted is strange, is even grotesque.  So far as I know, it is unprecedented in the history of diplomatic intercourse.  Learned gentlemen on the floor of the Senate, interested to defend and protect this course, may, in their extensive reading, have found examples of it.  I know of none.