alls these names. By what authority does HE interfere with the rights
of a member of this House. [The clerk continued to call.] He is an
intruder, and how dares he to interrupt members in the exercise of
their constitutional rights. Gentlemen, has the sense of shame departed
with your sense of right, that you permit a creature, an interloper, in
no wise connected with you, to stand at that desk and interrupt your
order?"

Mr. Toombs continued, amid these boisterous scenes, his alternate role
of argument, of appeal, of denunciation. He contended that a power
delegated to the House must be used by a majority of the House. He
concluded:

"I therefore demand of you before the country, in the name of the
Constitution and the people, to repeal your illegal rule, reject the one
on your table, and proceed to the discharge of your high duties, which
the people have confided to you, according to the unvarying precedents
of your people and the law of the land."

This performance was denounced by Northern restrictionists as menacing
and insolent. Mr. Stephens, in his "War Between the States," contended
that it should rather be considered in the light of a wonderful
exhibition of physical as well as intellectual prowess--in this, that a
single man should have been able, thus successfully, to speak to a
tumultuous crowd and, by declamatory denunciations combined with solid
argument, to silence an infuriated assembly.

The noise during the delivery of this speech gradually ceased. The
clerk stopped calling the roll, all interruptions were suspended and
"every eye," says Mr. Stephens, "was fixed upon the speaker." It was a
picture worthy of ranking with Lamartine's great speech to the
revolutionists in France.

On the 29th of February Mr. Toombs addressed the House upon the general
territorial question. He said:

"We had our institutions when you sought our allegiance. We were content
with them then, and we are content with them now. We have not sought to
thrust them upon you, nor to interfere with yours. If you believe what
you say, that yours are so much the best to promote the happiness and
good government of society, why do you fear our equal competition with
you in the Territories? We only ask that our common government shall
protect us both, equally, until the Territories shall be admitted as
States into the Union, then to leave their citizens free to adopt any
domestic policy in reference to this subject which in their ju