suppose that the regular Government, in times of excitement like these, is really responsible for such acts.  I know that these outbreaks of passion, these terrible excitements that sometimes pervade the community, are entirely irrepressible by the law of the country.  I suppose that is the case now; because if these outrages against northern citizens were really authorized by the State authorities there, were they a foreign Government, everybody knows, if it were the strongest Government on earth, we should declare war upon her in one day.

But what has caused this great excitement?  Sir, I will tell you what I suppose it is.  I do not (and I say it frankly) so much blame the people of the South; because they believe, and they are led to believe by all the information that ever comes before them, that we, the dominant party to-day, who have just seized upon the reins of this Government, are their mortal enemies, and stand ready to trample their institutions under foot.  They have been told so by our enemies at the North.  Their misfortune, or their fault, is that they have lent a too easy ear to the insinuations of those who are our mortal enemies, while they would not hear us.

Now I wish to inquire, in the first place, honestly, candidly, and fairly, whether the Southern gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber that complain so much, have any reasonable grounds for that complaint—­I mean when they are really informed as to our position.

Northern Democrats have sometimes said that we had personal liberty bills in some few of the States of the North, which somehow trenched upon the rights of the South under the fugitive bill to recapture their runaway slaves; a position that in not more than two or three cases, so far as I can see, has the slightest foundation in fact; and even if those where it is most complained of, if the provisions of their law are really repugnant to that of the United States, they are utterly void, and the courts would declare them so the moment you brought them up.  Thus it is that I am glad to hear the candor of those gentlemen on the other side, that they do not complain of these laws.  The Senator from Georgia (Mr. Iverson) himself told us that they had never suffered any injury, to his knowledge and belief, from those bills, and they cared nothing about them.  The Senator from Virginia (Mr. Mason) said the same thing; and, I believe, the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Brown).  You all, then, have given up this bone of contention, this matter of complaint which Northern men have set forth as a grievance more than anybody else.

Mr. Mason.  Will the Senator indulge me one moment.

Mr. Wade.  Certainly.

Mr. Mason.  I know he does not intend to misrepresent me or other gentlemen.  What I said was, that the repeal of those laws would furnish no cause of satisfaction to the Southern States.  Our opinions of those laws we gave freely.  We said the repeal of those laws would give no satisfaction.